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Google ranking secrets revealed
- Part 1
Google has recently filed a patent
that details many points that Google uses to rank web pages.
The title of the patent is "Information retrieval based
on historical data" and it confirms the existence of
the Google sandbox and that it can apply to all web pages.
In this article, we're trying to find out what this means
to your web site and what you have to do to optimize your
web pages so that you get high rankings on Google.
Part 1: How your web page changes influence your
rankings on Google
The patent specification revealed a lot of information about
possible ways Google might use your web page changes to determine
the ranking of your site.
In addition to web page content, the ranking of web pages
is influenced by the frequency of page or site updates. Google
measures content changes to determine how fresh or how stale
a web page is. Google tries to distinguish between real and
superfluous content changes.
This doesn't mean that it is always advisable to regularly
change the content of your web pages. Google says that stale
results might be desirable for information that doesn't need
updating while fresh content is good for results that require
it.
For example, seasonal results might go up and down in the
result pages based on the time of the year.
Google possibly records the following web page changes:
- the frequency of changes
- the amount of 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)
Google might use the results of this analysis to specify
the ranking of a web page in addition to its content.
Section 0128 in the patent filing reveals that you shouldn't
change the focus of too many documents at once:
"A significant change over time in the set of
topics associated with a document may indicate that the
document has changed owners and previous document indicators,
such as score, anchor text, etc., are no longer reliable.
Similarly, a spike in the number of topics could indicate
spam. For example, if a particular document is associated
with a set of one or more topics over what may be considered
a 'stable' period of time and then a (sudden) spike occurs
in the number of topics associated with the document, this
may be an indication that the document has been taken over
as a 'doorway' document.
Another indication may include the disappearance of
the original topics associated with the document. If one
or more of these situations are detected, then [Google]
may reduce the relative score of such documents and/or the
links, anchor text, or other data associated the document."
This means that the Google
sandbox phenomenon may apply to your web site if you change
your web pages.
What does this meant to your web site?
First of all, you should make sure that your web page content
is optimized
for Google. If your web page content is not optimized,
all other ranking factors won't help you much.
Try to find out if the keywords you target on search engines
require static or fresh search results and update your web
site content accordingly. Make sure that you don't change
too much at once so that your web site won't be put in the
sandbox.
In upcoming newsletter issues, we'll discuss other important
factors that can influence your ranking on Google and that
are mentioned in the patent specification..
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