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. If users show they're satisfied with the content delivered by a particular search query, Google further strengthens the relationship between the two. Here are some of the ways a user can signal satisfaction with the delivered content:
- The user stays on the page
- The user clicks through to other pages from the result content
- The user doesn’t leave the page and returns to Google to continue their search (Google sees this kind of behavior—a bounce—as an indicator that they didn't get what they came for).
The first few days after your content is indexed are critical. Google will ‘test’ your content with select audiences and search queries it thinks could match. It will continue to serve the content if user response signals are good. If user response is poor, it will deprioritize it or experiment with its delivery in alternate search queries.
Content that summarizes information won’t cut it anymore. There are tools for that now. Content that will win will take information and add specificity, insights, and real-world examples that can only be gained from experience.
