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News and Information
Google's Algorithm
March 2008
Web search engine Google takes many factors into consideration when deciding how to rank a site. Some sources
pin the number in excess of 100 different parameters. Using this many pieces of information wisely takes considerable expertise
and to Google's credit when they don't get it right the first time they make adjustments to the weight of these factors until
a truer site description emerges. This explains why sites that had somewhat high placement in the SERPs sometimes fall and conversely
those that were lower are more visible, nearer or in the coveted top 30 rankings. Google has, and will tweak and change the
guideline along which it ranks pages.
These numerous criteria can be considered to fall within two major camps, namely, onsite and offsite.
Determining if the organic use of (natural combinations and number of) keywords is being employed onsite along with assessing
if outgoing and incoming (reciprocal) links are thematically related is the focus of the Google algorithm. It's on these topics that the rankings hinge.
Google basically judges how well you conform to their rules and expectations. See their guidelines for more info.
Understanding it in simple terms - make a site for your intended audience and by and large Google will reward you with
better and better placement as long as you are adding relevant content and maintaing a good supply of related incoming (reciprocal) links. This last item is somewhat out of your hands but as
far as Google is concerned if you build a good or usefull site then people will want to link to it.
Remember Google is a business and if the business does not produce the
best results (high percentage of relevancy) currently possible to its users (searchers) then it's not going to be used as much. In economic terms - less users leads to less ad revenue.
I'm not sounding the fall of Google here as it's hard to believe they will slip from their high perch but any business that rests on its laurels
and doesn't keep doing what it does best will lose ground eventually. It's for this reason that you can bet they will continue to adjust their ranking model in order to provide the best results possible.
Latest Google "Dance" and Reciprocal Links
December 2005
The "all-knowing" and powerful search engine Google has started a new "dance" -
a change in its methods whereby sites are assessed and ranked.
With Google's new algorithm changes one of the ways of
generating a high ranking on Google has now been downgraded
and possibly may be detrimental to your sites ranking.
What I'm talking about here are reciprocal links.
Whole industries were spawned because Google was according high
relevance to inbound links (IBLs) pointing to your site.
Trade them, buy them, sell them, reciprocal links were the ticket to site relevance.
The more links the better. This was regardless of the type of
site that the IBL originated. If your site was, say, in the business of
shoe sales and had an IBL from a site dealing with car accessories, a toy
manufacturer or even an online pharmacy it did not matter. This has all
changed. Google has, and rightly so, begun to check whether the IBLs are part of
a link farm or what it has determined to be reciprocal link wholesalers, so to speak, that would
sell the same links to many a site. In a word, spammers. This is good news
for the Google user - it should generate more relevant results.
Those that have reciprocal link campaigns should not be totally discouraged.
IBLs will still play a major role in enhancing site visibility
and determining PageRank.
This of course will be true if the IBLs
are coming from a site that is in the same industry and/or
in the same field - a commonly themed site. For this reason it is imperative that
your site be rid of numerous links to others that do not share the same theme
(keep links to unrelated sites to a minimum as a few here and there will not disadvantage you) or to a site Google deems to be using questionable techniques to enhance it's visibility.
Finding out who is linking to your site is also important even though your control over
this is more limited, nonetheless you should try to find as
many sites as possible who are linking to you and determine if they are a benefit or a detriment
and take appropriate action. Google provides this service
but does not list all IBLs from afield.
Google would like to see reciprocal link pages with no more than 30 or so links per page
that also include useful copy and not just a list of links.
Other search engines are still crediting reciprocating IBLs in the same way as usual. Depending upon your strategy
concerning site optimization you can't have it both ways. Either you go with Google
and assume the other search engines will follow suit or take the chance that unthemed reciprocal link campaigns will
still help you at other search engines and take your chances with Google. It's one or the other.
In order to assist you in getting your partner link pages together LinkICE, an automated IBL Integrity Checking Engine, is available here for free: Check Links.
Regardless of your decision LinkICE will still provide a means of checking who is linking back
to you as well as determining link integrity from themed sources. The decision is yours as to
how you intend to design your site and LinkICE can help you either way.
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