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

At SEOmoz, we make SOFTWARE!!
We don’t offer any consulting.<br />

Ranking in Google: 1999-2002<br />

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

PageRank<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.elliance.com/aha/infographics/Google-PageRank-Explained.aspx<br />

PageRank<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-science-of-ranking-correlations<br />

Ranking in Google: 2003 -
2005<br />

Anchor Text<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/anchor-text<br />

From 1999 – 2008, What
Page Ranked #1for the Queries “Exit” and “Leave”?<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://searchengineland.com/google-kills-bushs-miserable-failure-search-other-google-bombs-10363<br />

From 1999 – 2008, What
Page Ranked #1for the Queries “Exit” and “Leave”?<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://searchengineland.com/google-kills-bushs-miserable-failure-search-other-google-bombs-10363<br />

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

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

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

Ranking in Google: 2006 -
2009<br />

Domain Authority<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-domain-authority-page-authority-metrics<br />

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

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

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

Ranking in Google: 2009 -
2011<br />

Twitter Data<br />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?<br />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 <br />http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389<br />

Twitter Data<br />Page A<br />646
links from 36 root domains<br />2 tweets<br />Page B<br />1 link from 1 root domain<br />522 tweets<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-do-tweets-influence-search-rankings-an-experiment-for-a-cause<br />

Twitter Clearly Influencing Google<br />Page
B – the tweeted version – ranks #1!<br />Page A<br />646 links from 36 root domains<br />2 tweets<br />Page B<br />1 link from 1 root domain<br />522 tweets<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-do-tweets-influence-search-rankings-an-experiment-for-a-cause<br />

Twitter Data is Very Powerful
in QDF<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tweets-effect-rankings-unexpected-case-study<br />

Don’t Try Abusing Twitter for
SEO<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tweets-effect-rankings-unexpected-case-study#jtc133590<br />

Author Authority<br />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?<br />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)<br />Google: Yes we do compute and use author quality. We don’t know who anyone is in real life :-)<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389<br />

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

Brand Signals<br />Brands<br />Generics<br /><ul><li>
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</li></ul>http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-next-generation-of-ranking-signals<br />

Entity Association<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-next-generation-of-ranking-signals<br />

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

How the Search Ranking Factors
Have Changed in the Eyes of Experts<br />

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

New data will be available
on SEOmoz in April, 2011<br />

Big Changes from 2009 to
2011<br /><ul><li> 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)</li></ul>The new version of the ranking factors will be online in April, 2011<br />

A Look at Google’s “Farmer”(aka
“Panda”) Update<br />

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

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

From the Mouths of Googlers<br
/>Wired.com: How do you recognize a shallow-content site? <br />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?”<br />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?”<br />Singhal: And based on that, we basically formed some definition of what could be considered low quality. <br />http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/all/1<br />

From the Mouths of Googlers<br
/>Wired.com: But how do you implement that algorithmically?<br />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. <br />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.<br />http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/all/1<br />

Links Didn’t Seem to Have
Much Impact<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-farmer-update-analysis-of-winners-vs-losers<br />

How Google’s Interface Has Evolved<br
/>

Old Google SERPs<br />

Google SERPs Today<br />

Google SERPs Tomorrow<br />

How Search Marketers Can Evolve<br
/>

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

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

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

Become a “Brand”<br />Brands<br />Generics<br
/><ul><li> 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</li></ul>http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-next-generation-of-ranking-signals<br />

Find Where Top Brands Earn
Citations<br />Where do these brands earn their links?<br />http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html<br />http://www.opensiteexplorer.org<br />

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

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

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

Take Advantage of New Opportunities<br
/>http://www.9e3k.com/9e3k/monday-meme-yoda-spreads-some-9e3k-love/<br />

Take Advantage of New Opportunities<br
/>http://outspokenmedia.com/social-media/quora-hipsters/<br />

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

Q+A<br />Rand Fishkin, CEO &
Co-Founder, SEOmoz<br /><ul><li> Twitter: @randfish

Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog

Email: rand@seomoz.org</li></ul>You can now try
SEOmoz PRO Free!<br />http://www.seomoz.org/freetrial<br />

Summary of This Presentation<br />The
Evolution and Future of Google’s Rankings:<br /><ul><li> 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</li>