How Does Google Interpret a Search Query for Ranking

Purposes

Presented by Eli Schwartz

Confidential

Introduction

• SEO: Search Engine Optimization is the concept of following search engine best practices

• NOT a process of tricking search crawlers

• Architecture and method of presenting information that both search engines AND users can understand

• Search engines are in the business of satisfying their users, free traffic is a byproduct of that mission

Confidential 2

90% of Clicks

10% of Clicks

Organic vs Paid Search

Interesting facts about Google’s Algorithm

• Greatest market share in most of the world

• 200 Primary Metrics• Updated hundreds of times per month• Humans “supposedly” do not interfere with the algorithm

• Google uses data from all of its properties

• Google’s first name was “Backrub”

“With your permission you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don't need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less now what you're thinking about.”

Eric Schmidt in an interview with The Atlantic, October 2010

Google’s mind reading

Language preferences

Language preferences override ccTLD of Google site

Language differences

What does Google know about you?

https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/view

Personal history

Without Personal history

How to browse without cookies and history

Browser Shortcut

Chrome Ctrl (CMD) + Shift + N

Firefox Ctrl(CMD) + Shift + P

IE Ctrl + Shift + P

Safari Click Safari > Private Browsing > OK

Where are you?

Query “Warriors” – located in Palo Alto

Query “Warriors” – located in Baltimore

Query for Giants

Your connections

Google Instant

Suggestions and related

Spelling correction

Plurals

Synonyms

Non-text content

What does the query mean?

Design

Recipe

Book

Brand

Questionnaire – ambiguous term

Modified head term

Where is the keyword used: Title

Where is the keyword used: H1

Where is the keyword used: Content

International challenge

No exact match (yet)!

Domain authority

Domain authority visualized

Internal links visualized

United Airlines routes

Anchor text

Relevancy

Performance for Google’s users

Publish date (Freshness)

Recent content

Eventually…. Author-based ranking

Constant Google algo updates

• Attribution• Panda• Freshness• Search plus your world• Ads above the fold• Venice• Penguin• Knowledge graph• DMCA

Google rankings myths

• Page Rank correlates to rankings• Domain age or TLD (.org, .com, .us)• SEO = stuff valuable keywords in meta tags• More links > than content• Links from .Gov or .Edu automatically lead to better rankings• You always need to rank #1• Google just ranks text content• Brands have it easy

Questions?