The Google algorithm is constantly evolving, which can cause a few headaches when you’re a marketer trying to retain the highest possible page ranking at all times.
“Being at the top of Google is probably the most important factor in your whole marketing plan online,” says Chris Winfield, president of 10e20 LLC, a global search marketing and Web solutions company in New York. “Nothing comes close to being able to match it with people looking for what you do.”
Google acknowledges the influence that its algorithms have in the Web world, but officials also say that — just like Spider-Man — with great power comes great responsibility. No decision to devalue or omit a Web site is made without the algorithm behind it.
Never Say Never
Man people were hoping for them to enter the smartphone market as they were the ones who owned android and they did but in the initial years the Nexus line wasn’t that good and very few people knew about it but the Pixel is very popular among Android enthusiasts.
For the Pixel, they struggled with the sales and if you consider the words of industry experts they have kind of failed to gain the traction that they should have gained, that’s why the pixel 4a was launched with only one one color option and with only one storage option and in one size. The fewer sales of the phones don’t account for their even 0.1% revenue but people hoped for them to be the android king, not Samsung.
Over the years it has repeatedly shown that Google is a software-based company rather than a hardware-based company.
Bounded vs. Unbounded, Linear vs. Logarithmic
Almost all of these variables have bounds to them. For instance, you can only put the keyword in a title so many times before you “trip a search spam filter”. The age of a domain is ultimately bounded to whenever the domain name system started, and so on. There is one variable that is not bounded – PageRank. It is interesting to note, however, that this one is logarithmic – each level requires, on average, 5 times as many links to reach.
Incoming Anchor Text
The biggest missed opportunity in this study was not looking at keywords in inbound anchor text. I am postulating in the table that this is unbounded and linear. I think many of us have seen examples of situations in the SERPs where a PageRank 5 page is being outranked by a PageRank 2 page, the difference being something like 800 incoming links with targeted anchor text. My belief is that the weighting of this variable is very low (on the order of .05 -.1), but linear – this would explain why anchor text is the be-all and end-all of SEO – it may have a low weighting, but more just plain helps, and your ability to get it is virtually unlimited. Also, you get sort of a double value, in that the anchor text is probably one factor in ranking, and the link itself slightly increases your PageRank factor.
Page link mysteries
Even mathematicians familiar with the equations used to create the PageRank algorithm struggle with other non-numeric factors. David Austin, a math professor at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich., who published a paper on cracking Google’s algorithm, says the secret sauce is really a popularity contest wrapped in linear algebra.
Things you didn’t know about Google
- Most of the millennials are older than Google. Seriously if you are born before 1998 then you’re older than Google.
- Google’s very first name was BackRub. Can you believe that? It is good they changed their name otherwise, I guess it wouldn’t as popular as it is today.
- The garage that was rented by Sergey Brin and Larry Page to start the company was loaned to them by Susan Wojcicki. Today that lady is the CEO of Youtube.
- Gmail was launched on April Fool’s Day. People’s obvious reaction was that it was a joke but it turned to be the other way around. It was launched on 1st April 2004.
- Try http://elgoog.im, you will see one of the wonders of Google (and if you’re intelligent enough you’ll figure out what does it say).
B’day of Google is on 4th September 1998
Google makes minor changes to its algorithm on a daily basis. They might even release multiple updates in 24 hours.
These changes are usually small, and you probably won’t notice a drop in search page rankings due to these updates alone.
However, the same can’t be said for the “core” updates. Google makes these larger, more sweeping changes a few times per year, and they can directly impact your page performance.
Look out for a core update at least once or twice a year.
The study of course isn’t valid for specialized portions of Google’s search algorithms such as what order YouTube videos sort, or the Local Search component of Universal Search – many of these use other (of the 200+) factors.
However, the study illustrates a few things about SEO overall. It makes the most sense, from the perspective of the weightings available for each factor, to take care of your easy on-page issues first, then work on building up links (actually, it makes the most sense of all to buy an exact-match domain name first!).
This explains why most people in this field typically take care of issues in that order and explains the natural logical flow of SEO efforts starting with getting architecture right, then optimizing your content, and finally focusing on linking. Essentially SEO, like so many other fields, is all about identifying the work with the highest ROI-to-effort ratio and focusing on that first.
