How does Google rank results?

Jolanta_Nowak

What criteria does Google (and other search engines) use to put search results in the order it does?

I've been using it for many years and I'm no closer to understanding the methodology.

superscaper

Lots of different things. I think the exact equation they use is a trade secret (which has changed over the years anyway), so at best you have to guestimate how important any specific criterion is. Anything from keywords in pages to how often page is visited etc.

Stubert

Keywords obviously but it ranks them in order of how many other sites link to those sites (with those key words)

Hence a while ago when you typed in 'miserable failure' the first result returned George Bush. Known as a link bomb. And the case of the BMW website when you typed in some terms nothing to do with them they'd appear near the top thanks to links and adding of keywords by themselves.

superscaper

Stubert wrote: »

Keywords obviously but it ranks them in order of how many other sites link to those sites (with those key words)

Hence a while ago when you typed in 'miserable failure' the first result returned George Bush. Known as a link bomb. And the case of the BMW website when you typed in some terms nothing to do with them they'd appear near the top thanks to links and adding of keywords by themselves.

And of course Google takes a dim view of deliberate keyword spamming. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4685750.stm

Browntoa

google tweak theirsall the time, no-one is ever quite sure, hence the term "Google Dance" where a Number 1 position can become a number 9999

http://www.metamend.com/google-dance.html

b33r

Pah you're all wrong! It's all done using pigeonrank.

http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

(FYI this was published 1st April)

ormus

my daughter has a website on the industrial revolution in this area.
when you type in (google) the exact phrase she has as a title page, her page comes up as number one!!!
(it used to anyways).

tomstickland

The original Google made the major step of ranking based on how many other sites linked to the site. I guess that this is still part of their ranking blend.

Crabman

1) Visit www.google.co.uk

2) Type "french military victories" in the search box

3) Click "I'm Feeling Lucky"

Off topic I know but I couldn't resist

Blacksheep1979

it's partly on keywords, how close the keywords are together, where they are in the text (headings etc are higher than mid text) and how each page 'views' each other ie the pages vote for each other and the more votes the better the page (ie links from one page to another) but also votes from a higher ranked page count for more than from say a small personal website.

chunter

Very good, Crabman. Just not what I was expecting.

On the Google search
1) getting 'important' sites to link to you is very good
2) get the keywords right
3) along with the title of your main page.
4) and say lots of prayers to the Google God - Googhamed
5) get it into dmoz directory (eye of the needle stuff) - I've never got any of my 20 odd sites onto it.

i find if I get it right the thing right in Yahoo, it'll eventually follow in Google. but don't hold your breath. It may well take months.

I suppose that's why Google is worth so much money, (681 dollars a share) everybody gets fed up eventually and just bid on the the Adwords