By Rick Hendershot
by Rick Hendershot,
The Google patent application submitted in March, 2005 hasgenerated a good deal of debate among search engine optimizationexperts. The patent document contains many general suggestionsabout the direction Google wants to move their search criteriaand ranking techniques in the near future.
The document points out two areas in particular in which "thereremains a need to improve the quality of results generated bysearch engines." (0009) These two areas are
(a) artificially inflated rank due to spamming techniques, and(b) stale documents that rank higher than fresh ones, andtherefore "degrade the search results".
Google's ingenious proposal is to deal with both of theseproblems by focusing on the history of web documents and weblinks. Assuming they have the technology to record such amassive amount of information, their objective seems to be tokeep a detailed record of the pattern of changes within webpages.
This should address the spam issue by revealing unnaturalpatterns of change. Too many links too quickly suggests"unnatural" linking activity has been taking place. Significantlinks that come and go might suggest that expensive links arebeing purchased on a temporary basis and are not "natural".
And it should address the "staleness" issue by looking at theway specific pages have been updated. If a page that has rankedhigh in specific searches has not been updated for a period oftime, this will be seen as a reason to downgrade the importanceof that page. Other pages with more activity, more up to dateinformation, and more linking activity, all other things beingequal, will rank higher.
History is more important than ever
This means Google either already gives, or intends to give the"history" of documents more significance. And not just the datewhen the document is created, or most recently changed. Theyalso propose tracking the pattern of the changes in content,changes in anchor text of links, changes in numbers and qualityof inbound links, changes in quality and number of outboundlinks, changes in other pages within the same associated groupof documents, and even changes within the pages linking to adocument.
On top of that, they propose tracking user habits and patternsover time. How users got to the page in question, how long theystayed there, how many times the particular page was clicked onwhen it was presented in a search...a very impressive(bewildering?) array of factors.
In fact this is an ingenious attempt to solve the "spam" and"staleness" problems at the same time. The major assumption isthat up-to-date "relevant" content -- the kind the searchengines are supposed to be giving us -- will be regularlyupdated, will be inter-connected by an ever-increasing (andregularly changing) group of inbound links. In other words,links will come and go, changes will happen gradually, and"spikes" in either traffic or increased link activity will besure signs of spamming activity.
Conclusions
Whether all of these measures will ever be fully implemented ornot is beside the point. These suggestions make sense, and willbe adopted to some extent by all search engines. The future hasbeen defined, and it is up to creators of websites and onlinemarketers to make the most of it.
The most important conclusions we can take from the patentapplication is that the history of our pages matters. Inpractical terms, this means:
-- Rapid and wholesale changes in content will be looked uponwith suspicion -- Rapid increases in numbers of inbound andoutbound links will trigger red flags -- Changes in anchor textthat alter or remove its relationship to on-page content will besuspect -- Lack of regular and steady (but not radical) changeswill get your pages labelled "stale" -- Links that were valuablelast year (or month?) will not be as valuable this year (ormonth) because they are becoming "stale".
In other words, webmasters and internet marketers must keepadding content, keep upgrading their pages, keep improving andadding new ones, continue to get new links, and freshen up theirold ones if they can.
But they should not do any of it too quickly.
Think of this "history" component as a method of measuringchange. It may seem ridiculously vague, but this is the realitywe have to deal with.
In the new world order, change has three speeds: Too Slow, TooFast, and Just Right.
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