What The Google Patent Means For SEO

In the past issues of this newsletter we discussed Google's recently filed patent that details many factors that Google uses to rank web pages:

1. How Page Changes Affect Rankings On Google
2. Domain Name Influences On Google Rankings
3. Inbound Links & Your Rankings On Google
4. Google Search Results & User Data: Affects On Your Rankings
5. How Google Tracks User Behavior

We summarize the most important parts of the patent specification in this issue so that you have a quick overview about how Google might rank your web site according to this patent.

Google might use the following to determine the ranking of your pages:

• the frequency of web page changes
• the amount of web page changes (substantial or shallow changes)
• the change in keyword density
• the number of new web pages that link to a web page
• the changes in anchor texts (the text that is used to link to a web page)
• the number of links to low trust web sites (for example too many affiliate links on one web page)

Your Google rankings can also be influenced by your domain name:

• the length of the domain registration (one year vs. several years)
• the address of the web site owner, the admin and the technical contact
• the stability of data and host company
• the number of pages on a web site (web sites must have more than one page)

How Google might rate the links to your web site:

• the anchor text and the discovery date of links are recorded
• the appearance and disappearance of a link over time might be monitored
• the growth rates of links as well as the link growth of independent peer documents might be monitored
• the changes in the anchor texts over a given period of time might be monitored
• the rate at which new links to a web page appear and disappear might be recorded
• the distribution rating for the age of all links might be recorded
• links with a long life span might get a higher rating than links with a short life span
• links from fresh pages might be considered more important
• if a stale document continues to get incoming links, it will be considered fresh
• Google doesn't expect that new web sites have a large number of links
• if a new web site gets many new links, this will be tolerated if some of the links are from authorative sites
• Google indicates that it is better if link growth remains constant and slow
• Google indicates that anchor texts should be varied as much as possible
• Google indicates that burst link growth may be a strong indicator of search engine spam

Search results and user behavior might influence your Google rankings:

• the volume of searches over time is recorded and monitored for increases
• the information regarding a web page's rankings are recorded and monitored for changes
• the click through rates are monitored for changes in seasonality, fast increases, or other spike traffic
• the click through rates are monitored for increase or decrease trends
• the click through rates are monitored to find out if stale or fresh web pages are preferred for a search query
• the click through rates for web pages for a search term is recorded
• the traffic to a web page is recorded and monitored for changes
• the user behavior on web pages is monitored and recorded for changes
  (for example the use of the back button etc.)
• the user behavior might also be monitored through bookmarks, cache, favorites, and temporary files
• bookmarks and favorites are monitored for both additions and deletions
• the overall user behavior for documents is monitored for trend changes
• the time a user spends on a web page might be used to indicate the quality and freshness of a web page

Miscellaneous factors that can influence your Google rankings:

• web pages with frequent ranking changes might be considered untrustworthy
• keywords that have little change in the result pages are probably matched to domains with stable rankings
• keywords with many changes in the results are probably matched to domains with more votality

How to optimize your web site for Google's ranking algorithm

Detailed information on how to react to the different ranking factors can be found in the previous five issues of this newsletter.

Remember that this patent doesn't mean that Google really uses all of this. The patent only lists options that might be used by Google in addition to their main ranking algorithm.

The most important factors for high rankings on Google are good incoming links [Arelis Software Information] and optimized web page content [IBP Software Information]. You should make sure that your web site has both if you want high rankings on Google.

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