How Does Google Rank My Site?
Posted February 24th, 2008 | No Comments
Following the success of the last post How Much Does A Website Cost? This post will answer another frequently asked question. This time it’s How Does Google Rank My Site?
As with the previous post, there is no straight and easy answer to this question as nobody outside of Google HQ knows for sure. We do have some guidelines to help us understand though.
Google has redefined how search engines work, they claim that their search engine “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want“. They developed their own technology called PageRank.
Page ranking
First let’s take a look at what Google themselves have to say about it.
PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page’s importance by the number of votes it receives.
PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google’s technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid placement.
Put simply, PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is. It isn’t the only factor used to rank pages but it is an important one. Here’s what Google says about other determining factors.
Other Factors
Google’s search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), Google’s technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user’s query.
Content Is King
Translated as.. Google uses website content, including title text, inbound link text and body text to determine page rankings. A future blog post ‘Content Is King‘ will explain how important content is and how to write good content for the web.
As always, if you have any questions about anything covered in this post, please contact us and we will be happy to answer.
