Trackbacks Killed My Google Rank

Have a look at the search results. My post is still mentioned, but only by trackback (look for "those that like to tinker"). Three of the four posts I trackbacked to are in the top five (two of which weren't there before I trackbacked to them). My actual post however is missing from the results.

Now take a look at the search results with the "omitted results included". There's my post, just after the third post that I trackbacked to. You're probably familiar with the phrase "omitted results included". That's because Google usually has a line similar to this at the end of every search...

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 190 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

I've actually read about this happening to someone else. The web designer for a carpet cleaning site kept a copy of their work on their own site. Google saw identical content and removed one of the sites from its search results. Unfortunately it chose the wrong one (I imagine there was a bit of abuse from the carpet cleaning company after they realised what had happened).

Anyway, it looks like something similar has happened to me. By putting four trackbacks out there, three of which are on posts that have ended up ranking higher than mine, Google has decided my post is too similar to the others and has omitted it from the search results. All based on my post's title and the tiny excerpt that gets passed along with the trackback. Damn trackbacks!

There's not a lot I can do about it apart from change the first paragraph of my post in an attempt to avoid being "very similar". Alternatively I could email these very nice people and ask them to remove my trackbacks from their posts. Or perhaps I should just stop caring about my Google rank and start blogging about something actually worthwhile. Yeah, I might give that a go instead.

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