Google Ranking Evolution

The Evolution of Google RankingsHow Google’s algorithm has changed over the years and where it’s heading in the future
Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz CEO, March 2011

At SEOmoz, we make SOFTWARE!! We don’t offer any consulting.

Ranking in Google: 1999-2002

On-Page Optimization
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization

PageRank
http://www.elliance.com/aha/infographics/Google-PageRank-Explained.aspx

PageRank
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-science-of-ranking-correlations

Ranking in Google: 2003 - 2005

Anchor Text
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/anchor-text

From 1999 – 2008, What Page Ranked #1for the Queries “Exit” and “Leave”?
http://searchengineland.com/google-kills-bushs-miserable-failure-search-other-google-bombs-10363

Keyword Match Domain Names
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/exact-match-domains-are-far-too-powerful-is-their-time-limited

Registration & Historical Information
http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=1121

Topic Modeling
LDA correlates w/ Google rankings better than any other on-page feature
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/content-optimization-revisiting-topic-modeling-lda-our-labs-tool

Domain Authority
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-domain-authority-page-authority-metrics

Diversity of External Link Sources
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links

Nofollow, Sitemaps & Webmaster Tools
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-says-yes-you-can-still-sculpt-pagerank-no-you-cant-do-it-with-nofollow

Search Quality Raters
http://www.seobook.com/archives/000915.shtml

Twitter Data
Danny Sullivan: If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it?
Google: Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article
http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389

Twitter Data
Page A
646 links from 36 root domains
2 tweets
Page B
1 link from 1 root domain
522 tweets
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-do-tweets-influence-search-rankings-an-experiment-for-a-cause

Twitter Clearly Influencing Google
Page B – the tweeted version – ranks #1!
Page A
646 links from 36 root domains
2 tweets
Page B
1 link from 1 root domain
522 tweets
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-do-tweets-influence-search-rankings-an-experiment-for-a-cause

Twitter Data is Very Powerful in QDF
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tweets-effect-rankings-unexpected-case-study

Don’t Try Abusing Twitter for SEO
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tweets-effect-rankings-unexpected-case-study#jtc133590

Author Authority
Danny Sullivan: Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets that might be assigned to their Twitter page. Do you try to “know,” if you will, who they are?
Bing: Yes. We do calculate the authority of someone who tweets. For known public figures or publishers, we do associate them with who they are. (For example, query for Danny Sullivan)
Google: Yes we do compute and use author quality. We don’t know who anyone is in real life :-)
http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389

Facebook Likes & Shares
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-marketing-ultimate-guide

Brand Signals
Brands
Generics
Have real people working at a physical address
Have authentic, followed social accounts
Display obvious, robust contact information
Register with government/civic organizations
Receive traffic from diverse sources
Generate branded search query volume
Run offline marketing/advertising campaigns
Often exist only online
Rarely have significant social accounts
Frequently use email forms only
Stay “under the radar”
Search is often 90%+ of traffic
Have little-no branded search demand
Ignore the offline world
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-next-generation-of-ranking-signals

Entity Association

User & Usage Behavior
http://www.quora.com/Did-Bing-intentionally-copy-Googles-search-results

How the Search Ranking Factors Have Changed in the Eyes of Experts

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

New data will be available on SEOmoz in April, 2011

Big Changes from 2009 to 2011
Link-Based Factors are no longer 60%+ of the equation!
Social Data is perceived to be a significant player
Page-Level Link Metrics Fell the Most (43% - 22%)
Keyword-Level Domain Metrics, Brand Data + Social Rose
The Survey itself asked for more detail/specificity(which may be responsible for some of these shifts)
The new version of the ranking factors will be online in April, 2011

A Look at Google’s “Farmer”(aka “Panda”) Update

Sites that Lost Visibility
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-farmer-update-analysis-of-winners-vs-losers

Sites that Gained Visibility

From the Mouths of Googlers
Wired.com: How do you recognize a shallow-content site?
Singhal: (W)e asked the raters questions like: “Would you be comfortable giving this site your credit card? Would you be comfortable giving medicine prescribed by this site to your kids?”
Cutts: (Using) a rigorous set of questions, everything from. “Do you consider this site to be authoritative? Would it be okay if this was in a magazine? Does this site have excessive ads?”
Singhal: And based on that, we basically formed some definition of what could be considered low quality.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/all/1

From the Mouths of Googlers
Wired.com: But how do you implement that algorithmically?
Cutts: I think you look for signals that recreate that same intuition, that same experience that you have as an engineer and that users have.
Singhal: You can imagine in a hyperspace a bunch of points, some points are red, some points are green, and in others there’s some mixture. Your job is to find a plane which says that most things on this side of the place are red, and most of the things on that side of the plane are the opposite of red.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/all/1

Links Didn’t Seem to Have Much Impact

How Google’s Interface Has Evolved

Old Google SERPs

Google SERPs Today

Google SERPs Tomorrow

How Search Marketers Can Evolve

Don’t “Look” Like a Content Farm
http://www.suite101.com/content/canada-awarded-fifa-2015-womens-world-cup-of-soccerfootball-a356303

Don’t “Look” Like a Content Farm
http://hubpages.com/hub/WomensFashionsofthe1920-FlappersandtheJazz-Age

Watch Out for “Classic” SEO Tactics
Directory Link Building
Keyword-Variant Abuse
Reciprocal Link Pages
Paid Links w/ Manipulative Anchor Text
Sitewide, Footer Links
Navigation for Engines, Not Humans
Low Cost/Quality, Outsourced Content
Generic Design and Layout
Anchor-Text Rich Internal Links
Anonymous Contact Forms
Keyword Stuffed Titles + Pages
Ad Blocks Dominating the Page
It’s great to do good SEO, just don’t look like the only reason the site exists is to draw Google traffic

Become a “Brand”
Brands
Generics
Have real people working at a physical address
Have authentic, followed social accounts
Display obvious, robust contact information
Register with government/civic organizations
Receive traffic from diverse sources
Generate branded search query volume
Run offline marketing/advertising campaigns
Often exist only online
Rarely have significant social accounts
Frequently use email forms only
Stay “under the radar”
Search is often 90%+ of traffic
Have little-no branded search demand
Ignore the offline world

Find Where Top Brands Earn Citations
Where do these brands earn their links?
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org

Investigate Brand “Mention” Sources
Facebook page
Blippr?
Crunchbase profile
App profile on Blackberry
Twitter account
BusinessWeek Profile
Chrome Extension
Mashable Article

Focus on the User, But Don’t Forget the Engines
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/business/media/11search.html

Take Advantage of New Opportunities
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/05/introducing-rich-snippets.html

http://www.9e3k.com/9e3k/monday-meme-yoda-spreads-some-9e3k-love/

http://outspokenmedia.com/social-media/quora-hipsters/

Embrace All of Inbound Marketing
News/Media/PR
SEO
Email
Research/White Papers
Blogs + Blogging
Infographics
Comment Marketing
Social Networks
Online Video
INBOUND MARKETING!(AKA all the “free” traffic sources)
Webinars
Forums
Document Sharing
Social Bookmarking
Word of Mouth
Podcasting
Direct/Referring Links
Type-In Traffic
Q+A Sites

Q+A
Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz
Twitter: @randfish
Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog
Email: rand@seomoz.org
You can now try SEOmoz PRO Free!
http://www.seomoz.org/freetrial

Summary of This Presentation
The Evolution and Future of Google’s Rankings:
Where Google’s Been in the Past (1999-2010)
New Signals in Google: Social Media, User Data & Brand Signals
The Evolution of the Search Engine Results Interface
What Marketers Must Do to Keep Up with Google’s Evolution

Google Ranking Evolution

by Egidio Imbrogno

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