Search Engine NewsDiscuss Two new Google ranking patents in the vBulletin SEO Tips and SEO Questions forums; Google filed two new ranking patents in April: Document Scoring Based on Traffic Associated with a Document and Document Scoring Based on Query Analysis.
What do these new patents reveal ...
The patents are similar to a Google patent that we analyzed in an earlier issue of this newsletter.
They deal with web page changes over time that Google might track and analyze:
the web page creation date
the changes and updates of a web page
the analysis of search queries
links, link texts and the changes of the links
website traffic
user behavior
web page topics
domain related information
Google might assign a score to web pages based on that information. When a web page is associated with a search query, Google might combine history scores with relevancy scores to get a total score for the page.
Alternatively, the relevancy score of a web page might be changed based on the history score.
While that information was already available in previous patents, the new patents indicate that Google could also look at the following factors:
The rate at which ads are shown and updated on a web page over time.
The quality of the ads. For example, a web page whose ads link to web pages with a high TrustRank may get a higher score than pages whose ads lead to untrustworthy sites.
The click-through rate of the ads.
Googly might track and analyze web page characteristics that change over time, including ad traffic, to calculate a score for that page.
What does this mean for your website rankings?
It seems that Google starts to use more of the information that they have about a website to calculate the rankings.
That means that you need a holistic approach to search engine optimization. All factors must be correct when you optimize your site for search engines:
Make sure that your web page content is relevant to search engines. Without relevant content, you cannot get high rankings. (Optimize your web page contents with this tool.)
Make sure that you get links from the right pages and that you link to the right pages. The links from and to your website should be related to your site. (Optimize your links with this tool.)
Make sure that your website shows steadiness. If your website was yesterday about cars, today about shoes and tomorrow about sports then it will be difficult to get high rankings.
Make sure that your website shows steadiness. If your website was yesterday about cars, today about shoes and tomorrow about sports then it will be difficult to get high rankings.
What if you make it about sporty shoes for race car drivers?