49 - Google’s exposed search ranking system

Episode notes

Google has always guarded its search ranking factors. But thanks to the recent antitrust suit between the DOJ and Google, we now get a glimpse into the inner workings of their ranking systems through previously confidential internal documents. Here’s what we’ve confirmed about the process so far: Whenever new content is published and indexed on the internet, Google’s goal is to (as fast as possible) understand how relevant it is for searchers using its engine. Google uses three main factors of a document (or article) to do this: - Body - What a document says about itself (i.e., what do the URL, meta title, meta description, and body text signal about the content—will this be relevant for any existing search terms?) - Anchor - What the web says about the document (i.e., which other websites link to the document, do they also have authority in the same domain, what words are used in the hyperlink?) - User interactions - How readers respond to a document (i.e., clicks on the website, time spent on the result, clicks beyond the result page, subsequent searches, etc.) User interactions are the most critical ranking factor.