the evolution of google's rankings
DESCRIPTION
Rand Fishkin's presentation from Be Wizard, San Marino 2011 on the evolution of Google's rankings and how marketers can optimize for the next generation of ranking signals.TRANSCRIPT
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.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization
PageRank
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.elliance.com/aha/infographics/Google-PageRank-Explained.aspx
PageRank
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-science-of-ranking-correlations
Ranking in Google: 2003 - 2005
Anchor Text
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/anchor-text
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
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
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
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
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/content-optimization-revisiting-topic-modeling-lda-our-labs-tool
LDA correlates w/ Google rankings
better than any other on-page feature
Ranking in Google: 2006 - 2009
Domain Authority
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://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
Ranking in Google: 2009 - 2011
Twitter Data
http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389
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
Twitter Data
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-do-tweets-influence-search-rankings-an-experiment-for-a-cause
Page A646 links from 36 root domains
2 tweets
Page B1 link from 1 root domain
522 tweets
Twitter Clearly Influencing Google
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-do-tweets-influence-search-rankings-an-experiment-for-a-cause
Page A646 links from 36 root domains
2 tweets
Page B1 link from 1 root domain
522 tweets
Page B – the tweeted version –
ranks #1!
Twitter Data is Very Powerful in QDF
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/tweets-effect-rankings-unexpected-case-study
Don’t Try Abusing Twitter for SEO
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/tweets-effect-rankings-unexpected-case-study#jtc133590
Author Authority
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389
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?
Google: Yes we do compute and use author quality. We don’t know who anyone is in real life :-)
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)
Facebook Likes & Shares
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-marketing-ultimate-guide
Brand Signals
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-next-generation-of-ranking-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
Entity Association
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-next-generation-of-ranking-signals
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
The new version of the ranking factors will be online in April, 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)
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
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-farmer-update-analysis-of-winners-vs-losers
From the Mouths of Googlers
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/all/1
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.
From the Mouths of Googlers
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/all/1
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.
Links Didn’t Seem to Have Much Impact
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-farmer-update-analysis-of-winners-vs-losers
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
It’s great to do good SEO, just don’t look like the only reason the site exists is to draw Google traffic
Directory Link Building
Sitewide, Footer Links
Low Cost/Quality, Outsourced Content
Keyword Stuffed Titles + Pages
Anchor-Text Rich Internal Links
Navigation for Engines, Not Humans
Generic Design and Layout
Anonymous Contact Forms
Ad Blocks Dominating the Page
Reciprocal Link Pages Paid Links w/ Manipulative Anchor Text
Keyword-Variant Abuse
Become a “Brand”
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-next-generation-of-ranking-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
Find Where Top Brands Earn Citations
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.opensiteexplorer.org
Where do these brands earn their links?
Facebook page
Blippr?
Crunchbase profile
App profile on Blackberry
Twitter account
BusinessWeek Profile
Chrome Extension
Mashable Article
Investigate Brand “Mention” Sources
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
Take Advantage of New Opportunities
http://www.9e3k.com/9e3k/monday-meme-yoda-spreads-some-9e3k-love/
Take Advantage of New Opportunities
http://outspokenmedia.com/social-media/quora-hipsters/
Embrace All of Inbound Marketing
Blogs + Blogging
Comment Marketing
News/Media/PRSEO
Social Networks
Word of Mouth
Q+A Sites
Forums
Online Video
Podcasting
Webinars
Research/White Papers
Infographics
Social Bookmarking
INBOUND MARKETING!(AKA all the “free” traffic sources)
Direct/Referring Links
Type-In Traffic
Document Sharing
Q+ARand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz
• Twitter: @randfish
• Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog
• Email: [email protected]
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