One of the most common questions we hear from librarians is "How does Google decide what result goes at the top of the list?" Here, from quality engineer Matt Cutts, is a quick primer on how we crawl and index the web and then rank search results. Matt also suggests exercises school librarians can do to help students.
Crawling and Indexing
A lot of things have to happen before you see a web page containing your Google search results. Our first step is to crawl and index the billions of pages of the World Wide Web. This job is performed by Googlebot, our "spider," which connects to web servers around the world to fetch documents. The crawling program doesn't really roam the web; it instead asks a web server to return a specified web page, then scans that web page for hyperlinks, which provide new documents that are fetched the same way. Our spider gives each retrieved page a number so it can refer to the pages it fetched.
Our crawl has produces an enormous set of documents, but these documents aren't searchable yet. Without an index, if you wanted to find a term like civil war, our servers would have to read the complete text of every document every time you searched.
Google Librarian Central
Owning a Tourism Business is awesome
Showing posts with label pagerank. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pagerank. Show all posts
22 Aug 2008
Pagerank Explained. Google's PageRank and how to make the most of it.
Google's PageRank Explained
and how to make the most of itby Phil Craven
| What is PageRank? How is PageRank calculated? Internal linking | Dangling links Inbound links Outbound links | Toolbar PageRank Tips Miscellaneous |
What is PageRank?
PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page's importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page's PageRank is calculated.
PageRank is Google's way of deciding a page's importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page's ranking in the search results. It isn't the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.
From here on in, we'll occasionally refer to PageRank as "PR".
Pagerank Explained. Google's PageRank and how to make the most of it
New Toolbar PageRanks visible
New Toolbar PageRanks visible
Roughly every 3-4 months we take a snapshot of PageRank values and export them so that the new values are visible in the Google Toolbar.
I believe that another set of PageRanks started going out on Friday. New PageRanks are visible at many data centers, but not at every data center.
Why not at every data center? Because some data centers are using a slightly older infrastructure for a few query types that are off the beaten path a bit
(info:, link:, toolbar PageRank queries, etc.).
New Toolbar PageRanks visible
Roughly every 3-4 months we take a snapshot of PageRank values and export them so that the new values are visible in the Google Toolbar.
I believe that another set of PageRanks started going out on Friday. New PageRanks are visible at many data centers, but not at every data center.
Why not at every data center? Because some data centers are using a slightly older infrastructure for a few query types that are off the beaten path a bit
(info:, link:, toolbar PageRank queries, etc.).
New Toolbar PageRanks visible
20 Aug 2008
More info on PageRank
Every few months we update the PageRank data that we show in the toolbar, and every few months I see a few repeated questions, so let me take a pass at some of them. Note: I wrote this kinda quickly, so I think this is pretty good, but if I spot something incorrect later, I’ll change it.
Philipp Lenssen asks: “Matt, I often wonder, how is the PageRank value stored internally, is it a floating-point number as many people suggest or is it just the integer value itself due to the heavy recursive PR computations?”
It’s more accurate to think of it as a floating-point number. Certainly our internal PageRank computations have many more degrees of resolution than the 0-10 values shown in the toolbar.
viggen says: “Do i need to know that? What does it tell me when i know it? Why would i care? Meaning, what purpose has the Pagerank for the mom and pop site out there?”
viggen, I think that’s a perfectly healthy attitude. If you don’t care about PageRank and your site is doing well, that’s fine by me.
More info on PageRank
Philipp Lenssen asks: “Matt, I often wonder, how is the PageRank value stored internally, is it a floating-point number as many people suggest or is it just the integer value itself due to the heavy recursive PR computations?”
It’s more accurate to think of it as a floating-point number. Certainly our internal PageRank computations have many more degrees of resolution than the 0-10 values shown in the toolbar.
viggen says: “Do i need to know that? What does it tell me when i know it? Why would i care? Meaning, what purpose has the Pagerank for the mom and pop site out there?”
viggen, I think that’s a perfectly healthy attitude. If you don’t care about PageRank and your site is doing well, that’s fine by me.
More info on PageRank
18 Aug 2008
What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters
GREAT post about what Google PageRank really is... If you're not fully balled up on this yet, here's your crash course.
Stuart
=====================================================
Several times in the past few months, I've written about new Google features where PageRank was involved.
Unfortunately, Google itself has very poor information about PageRank that I could use for those wanting to learn more about it. To solve that, here's a guide to PageRank, designed for searchers and site owners alike.
This is fairly long article. To help, you can jump to particular sections of key interest, if you like:
What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters
Stuart
=====================================================
Several times in the past few months, I've written about new Google features where PageRank was involved.
Unfortunately, Google itself has very poor information about PageRank that I could use for those wanting to learn more about it. To solve that, here's a guide to PageRank, designed for searchers and site owners alike.
This is fairly long article. To help, you can jump to particular sections of key interest, if you like:
- Google's Definition: PageRank As Votes
- Recent Google Edits Emphasize PageRank Just One Of Many Factors
- PageRank For Searchers: Google Toolbar
- PR Stands For PageRank, Not Public Relations
- PageRank In The Google Directory
- PageRank For SEOs
- Seeing PageRank In Search Rankings
- PageRank Versus "Toolbar" PageRank
- PageRank Tech Talk
- Conclusion (Especially For Those Thinking I Don't Have Time To Read)
What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters
12 Aug 2008
Inbound links, link exchanges and link acquisition
Inbound links, link exchanges
and link acquisition
Why do we need inbound links?
Even before Google came on the scene, link popularity (linkpop) was being used by one or two search engines as part of their algorithm when determining the rankings for any given searchterm. Then when Google arrived with their link-based PageRank, link popularity took off and became an absolute essential ingredient in achieving top rankings.
The idea behind linkpop is that the more pages that link to a page, the more important the page is and it, therefore, deserves a higher ranking than it would otherwise have.
Some engines simply counted the number of links coming into a page (inbound links), but Google took the idea a step further. Each inbound link comes comes from a page which itself has inbound links. The more inbound links on the linking page, the more important that page is and, therefore, the more important the link to our page is. So Google gives more weight to inbound links from important pages that it does to inbound links from lesser pages. They call the idea "PageRank", and you can learn all about in this PageRank article.
Google is the world's number one search engine, and currently provides the results for around 80% of all the searches done in the world. Because of that, it is vitally important for any website that relies on search engine traffic to do well in Google. Doing well in Google means making the site 'important' in Google's eyes and, to do that, the site must have good inbound links - as many of them as possible, and preferably from important pages (pages with medium to high PageRank values).
Inbound links, link exchanges and link acquisition
31 Jul 2008
Microsoft Talks About 'BrowseRank'- Beyond PageRank?
News.com, reports that a Microsoft research team has recently come up with a new concept known as BrowseRank. Through this concept, Microsoft has tried to teach Google a thing or two about ranking pages. According to the new theory, BrowseRank can prove to be more effective than PageRank...
...as it would rank pages according to the user online behavior and not by the amount of web pages linked to a specific web page as done by Google PageRank.
According to the researchers who worked on the BrowseRank theory, "The more visits of the page made by the users and the longer time periods spent by the users on the page, the more likely the page is important. We can leverage hundreds of millions of users' implicit voting on page importance." the research team included Bin Gao, Tie-Yan Liu, and Hang Li from Microsoft Research Asia and Ying Zhang of Nankai University, Zhiming Ma of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shuyuan He of Peking University.
How BrowseRank Works:
Basically, BrowseRank takes into consideration the amount of time a user spends on a particular website. This helps BrowseRank in assessing the quality of the webpage. BrowseRank not only monitors traffic arriving via links, but also has the ability to monitor direct URL visits via bookmarks or URLs that are typed in the Address Bar. The research has termed the pages that are safe, interesting, relevant for users as "Green Traffic." This kind of ranking will help with direct URLs that are keyword enriched along with brand specific searches and URL searches, as it would be able to recognize and assimilate such websites in the "Green Traffic" category.
Inadequacies of PageRank:
According the researchers associated with the program, Google PageRank can be easily manipulated by using the unethical means of link farming. Secondly, PageRank only takes into account the amount of web links associated with a webpage and not the amount of time spent by a user at the website. However, Google refutes these claims stating that, "It's important to keep in mind that PageRank is just one of more than 200 signals we use to determine the ranking of a Web site. Search remains at the core of everything Google does, and we are always working to improve it."
The Shortcomings of BrowseRank:
As BrowseRank takes into account the time spent by a user on a particular website while compiling its data, it then becomes obvious that it highlights a lot of social networking websites. However, the issues with such websites is that, the content of these websites isn't generally valuable or relevant to audience at large. This factor, makes the BrowseRank little ineffective, as it could lead to a lot of of results that are irrelevant, spam, or both.
...as it would rank pages according to the user online behavior and not by the amount of web pages linked to a specific web page as done by Google PageRank.
According to the researchers who worked on the BrowseRank theory, "The more visits of the page made by the users and the longer time periods spent by the users on the page, the more likely the page is important. We can leverage hundreds of millions of users' implicit voting on page importance." the research team included Bin Gao, Tie-Yan Liu, and Hang Li from Microsoft Research Asia and Ying Zhang of Nankai University, Zhiming Ma of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shuyuan He of Peking University.
How BrowseRank Works:
Basically, BrowseRank takes into consideration the amount of time a user spends on a particular website. This helps BrowseRank in assessing the quality of the webpage. BrowseRank not only monitors traffic arriving via links, but also has the ability to monitor direct URL visits via bookmarks or URLs that are typed in the Address Bar. The research has termed the pages that are safe, interesting, relevant for users as "Green Traffic." This kind of ranking will help with direct URLs that are keyword enriched along with brand specific searches and URL searches, as it would be able to recognize and assimilate such websites in the "Green Traffic" category.
Inadequacies of PageRank:
According the researchers associated with the program, Google PageRank can be easily manipulated by using the unethical means of link farming. Secondly, PageRank only takes into account the amount of web links associated with a webpage and not the amount of time spent by a user at the website. However, Google refutes these claims stating that, "It's important to keep in mind that PageRank is just one of more than 200 signals we use to determine the ranking of a Web site. Search remains at the core of everything Google does, and we are always working to improve it."
The Shortcomings of BrowseRank:
As BrowseRank takes into account the time spent by a user on a particular website while compiling its data, it then becomes obvious that it highlights a lot of social networking websites. However, the issues with such websites is that, the content of these websites isn't generally valuable or relevant to audience at large. This factor, makes the BrowseRank little ineffective, as it could lead to a lot of of results that are irrelevant, spam, or both.
16 Aug 2007
SEO Or PageRank – Which Is The More Important?
By Peter Nisbet (c) 2007
Whether you believe in SEO or PageRank and wonder which is more important, your thinking is irrelevant. You are wasting your time in wondering what is the correct answer to that question, since even if you knew it, there is little you could do to use that information.
Why do I say that? Because SEO, or search engine optimization, is a way of designing your website, and placing content in it, to satisfy search engine algorithms. Search engines are so sophisticated today that if you achieve that, then you will also satisfy visitors to your website. If you satisfy visitors to your website, then they will stay on the page they landed on and read it. They will then click to read other pages on your website and might even make a purchase.
Sure, some will leave right away, but if the search engines feel that your content is good enough for a high placement in their indices for the search term, or keyword, that your visitor used to get to your web page, then it is more likely that you will achieve a relatively high stick rate of people to your site than a lower one.
Now, consider if you thought Google PageRank more important (and PageRank is correct, not Page Rank). You would then spend more of your time trying to get links back to your website than you would properly optimizing your site and filling it with good content. If you were successful in that difficult job, then Google, and possibly other search engines, would list you a bit higher in their indices, not because their spiders thought your site was relevant to the search term used by the potential visitors, but because other websites thought so.
You will then get visitors to your website, and the page they land on would have to be relevant to the search term they used or they will immediately leave. If it is relevant, they will stay, perhaps visit other web pages and perhaps make a purchase.
So what is the difference? You get basically the same end result. How can you tell which is the more important. There is one simple way to do this, and one that I have used more than once. Design two websites round the same keyword. Make the keyword the name of the website and then apply classical theoretical SEO to one site, including some of the extra special tips that can make the difference between success and failure – in fact that DO make that difference.
Now apply only minimal SEO to the other and make sure you have exactly the same content on each, but rewritten to avoid duplicate content or that would negate the test. However, with the second site, you must generate as many links back to your website as possible, using non-reciprocal links where possible, but reciprocal links where necessary. There are a few ways in which you can generate lots of one-way links to selected pages on your site, and you should make that your home page for the purposes of this test.
Wait 4 weeks then check Google, Yahoo and MSN for the position of each of your home pages. You will find that your first website will generally be listed higher for the keyword that both sites are built round.
Check again about 3 months later, and you will likely find that website 2 will feature higher as the links start to take effect, but then the first site will overtake it as it generates its own links naturally.
Basically, what this proves to me is that it is essential to optimize your website for search engines in the classical way, but that for best results you must also have a good level of links back to your website. There are simple, ways to achieve both, but that would be the topic of another article. However, in the end, if you apply both, then you will achieve best results. I know that there are exceptions to this, and I have highlighted them in some of my ebooks, but generally that is the case.
So, the answer to the question: SEO or PageRank, is that neither is the more important. They are both equally important, but it is possible to do one better than the other and then you would be tempted to say that your way was best. But you would be wrong!
If you did find what was the best, you couldn't use that information since search engines rules are transitory but good honest content and classical SEO have always prevailed, as has a good number of links that others follow to reach your website.
About The Author
Peter is an expert on audio-visual file formats and codecs and more information on p2p file sharing software can be obtained from his websites LegalAndFree.com and Online-Free-Movies.com where options are presented and the ethics discussed.
Whether you believe in SEO or PageRank and wonder which is more important, your thinking is irrelevant. You are wasting your time in wondering what is the correct answer to that question, since even if you knew it, there is little you could do to use that information.
Why do I say that? Because SEO, or search engine optimization, is a way of designing your website, and placing content in it, to satisfy search engine algorithms. Search engines are so sophisticated today that if you achieve that, then you will also satisfy visitors to your website. If you satisfy visitors to your website, then they will stay on the page they landed on and read it. They will then click to read other pages on your website and might even make a purchase.
Sure, some will leave right away, but if the search engines feel that your content is good enough for a high placement in their indices for the search term, or keyword, that your visitor used to get to your web page, then it is more likely that you will achieve a relatively high stick rate of people to your site than a lower one.
Now, consider if you thought Google PageRank more important (and PageRank is correct, not Page Rank). You would then spend more of your time trying to get links back to your website than you would properly optimizing your site and filling it with good content. If you were successful in that difficult job, then Google, and possibly other search engines, would list you a bit higher in their indices, not because their spiders thought your site was relevant to the search term used by the potential visitors, but because other websites thought so.
You will then get visitors to your website, and the page they land on would have to be relevant to the search term they used or they will immediately leave. If it is relevant, they will stay, perhaps visit other web pages and perhaps make a purchase.
So what is the difference? You get basically the same end result. How can you tell which is the more important. There is one simple way to do this, and one that I have used more than once. Design two websites round the same keyword. Make the keyword the name of the website and then apply classical theoretical SEO to one site, including some of the extra special tips that can make the difference between success and failure – in fact that DO make that difference.
Now apply only minimal SEO to the other and make sure you have exactly the same content on each, but rewritten to avoid duplicate content or that would negate the test. However, with the second site, you must generate as many links back to your website as possible, using non-reciprocal links where possible, but reciprocal links where necessary. There are a few ways in which you can generate lots of one-way links to selected pages on your site, and you should make that your home page for the purposes of this test.
Wait 4 weeks then check Google, Yahoo and MSN for the position of each of your home pages. You will find that your first website will generally be listed higher for the keyword that both sites are built round.
Check again about 3 months later, and you will likely find that website 2 will feature higher as the links start to take effect, but then the first site will overtake it as it generates its own links naturally.
Basically, what this proves to me is that it is essential to optimize your website for search engines in the classical way, but that for best results you must also have a good level of links back to your website. There are simple, ways to achieve both, but that would be the topic of another article. However, in the end, if you apply both, then you will achieve best results. I know that there are exceptions to this, and I have highlighted them in some of my ebooks, but generally that is the case.
So, the answer to the question: SEO or PageRank, is that neither is the more important. They are both equally important, but it is possible to do one better than the other and then you would be tempted to say that your way was best. But you would be wrong!
If you did find what was the best, you couldn't use that information since search engines rules are transitory but good honest content and classical SEO have always prevailed, as has a good number of links that others follow to reach your website.
About The Author
Peter is an expert on audio-visual file formats and codecs and more information on p2p file sharing software can be obtained from his websites LegalAndFree.com and Online-Free-Movies.com where options are presented and the ethics discussed.
14 Jun 2007
Avoid potential ranking loss from duplicate content
An easy step that can help avoid potential ranking loss from duplicate content reprimands is to make sure there aren’t four or five different URLs navigating to the same page. Google views these two domains below as separate entities and if the content is exact, they can take punitive measures against the offending site.
mysite.com
http://www.mysite.com
To address potential duplicate content penalties, manipulate your.htaccess file and redirect secondary domains to the preferred listing. This means every time a web user enters the mysite.com address without the preferred prefix, they are redirected to the correct domain.
Add the following code to your .htaccess file (change the "mysite" to your domain):
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]
mysite.com
http://www.mysite.com
To address potential duplicate content penalties, manipulate your.htaccess file and redirect secondary domains to the preferred listing. This means every time a web user enters the mysite.com address without the preferred prefix, they are redirected to the correct domain.
Add the following code to your .htaccess file (change the "mysite" to your domain):
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]
4 May 2007
Google PageRank Explained
From the words of Google themselves...
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance.
Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.
25 Feb 2007
Google Rankings - Improve Your Search Engine Ranking
Google Rankings - Improve Your Search Engine Ranking:
How Google Ranks Your Web Page
For some time, Google was hands down, the Internet's most important search engine. It now has a lot of competition in the running now with Yahoo's new search engine and with the upcoming MSN search. Regardless, Google is still an important search engine to understand as it has the power to deliver a tremendous amount of traffic to your website.
This article does not strive to provide all the answers to Google rankings. This is not a technical document - it just provides you with practical tips on improving your Google rankings.
What Google Looks at:
Link Popularity: Google's version of this is called PageRank. Very simply put, the idea is that site A votes for site B by placing a link to site B on site A. Despite popular belief, simply exchanging links with a whole bunch of sites isn't necessarily going to increase your PageRank. The Google search engine analyzes the importance of the sites providing the links to your site. Focus on receiving links from sites with good rankings and that are related to your website.
Download the Google Toolbar to check your PageRank and the PageRank of sites you link with: Be weary of linking with sites a PageRank of 0 ~ perhaps, they are new to the Internet, but they may also be a banned site. "
Google Rankings - Improve Your Search Engine Ranking:
How Google Ranks Your Web Page
For some time, Google was hands down, the Internet's most important search engine. It now has a lot of competition in the running now with Yahoo's new search engine and with the upcoming MSN search. Regardless, Google is still an important search engine to understand as it has the power to deliver a tremendous amount of traffic to your website.
This article does not strive to provide all the answers to Google rankings. This is not a technical document - it just provides you with practical tips on improving your Google rankings.
What Google Looks at:
Link Popularity: Google's version of this is called PageRank. Very simply put, the idea is that site A votes for site B by placing a link to site B on site A. Despite popular belief, simply exchanging links with a whole bunch of sites isn't necessarily going to increase your PageRank. The Google search engine analyzes the importance of the sites providing the links to your site. Focus on receiving links from sites with good rankings and that are related to your website.
Download the Google Toolbar to check your PageRank and the PageRank of sites you link with: Be weary of linking with sites a PageRank of 0 ~ perhaps, they are new to the Internet, but they may also be a banned site. "
Google Rankings - Improve Your Search Engine Ranking:
4 May 2006
Google Toolbar : PageRank, Linking Strategies & More
So, you've gone and downloaded the toolbar at toolbar.google.com, but now what? This free toolbar that allows you gather useful information about yours and other websites. You just need to know how to use it.
Google Toolbar Basics
1. PageRank: The green bar you see as you visit different web pages shows a website's Google PageRank. To put it simply, PageRank is a bit like link popularity, but there are many factors involved in its calculation ~ which Google won't entirely reveal. You can look at the "official" Google information on PageRank at google.com/technology/ if you are inclined.
2. Page Info: You'll see the letter "i" in a blue circle with the words "Page Info" beside it. There's actually a lot of useful information to be found here.
3. Cached Snapshot of Page: This will show you what the particular page you are looking at looked like when Google last indexed it. * Note - When you do a search on Google, you can always choose to see the cached version of the page. This highlights the keywords you typed in right on the web page. It's a very useful search tool.
4. Similar Pages: I don't quite get this option, but Google says it shows "pages that are related to a particular result" ~ I guess they are sites related to yours. For myself, I find they are usually sites I've exchanged links with, but it's a smaller list than "Backward Links".
5. Backward Links: You may have exchanged links with a zillion sites, but by checking the "Backward Links", you'll see how many and which links Google actually considers to be important. These links help make up your PageRank.
6. Translate into English: If you're visiting a website in another language, you can have Google translate it into English. Of course, you'll have to take any translation with a grain of salt. So What Do You Do with This Google Toolbar Information? Find Link Partners As you can already see, Google does not consider all your backward links to be important. It is generally thought that Google indexes links from pages with a PageRank of 4 or higher ~ but this is not the sole determining factor. This means the precise page you are receiving the link from should have a PageRank of 4 or higher to be counted. If the home page has a PageRank of 4, but the links page only has a rank of 2, it might not be counted.
This does not mean your links will not be considered important by other search engines. We are just talking about Google here. If you want to increase your PageRank, you want links from pages with a PageRank of 4 or higher.
You might want to avoid exchanging links with a site not listed on Google (do a search for the site or put your mouse of the PageRank bar to see if it has been ranked). If they are not listed, they may very well be a new site, but it is possible they are a banned site. You do not want to exchange links with a banned site. You could be guilty by association!
You should also make efforts to exchange links with sites that are targeting similar keywords as you. Do a search for sites using your keywords. Analyze Your Google PageRank Your PageRank can certainly help you with your rankings for certain keywords. Your goal is to increase your PageRank to receive more FREE traffic from Google. Use your toolbar to find out the various PageRanks of the various pages within your site.
You can help increase your PageRank on your own by creating numerous internal links to your various pages. When exchanging links, don't just have links to your home page. Choose a few other important pages to which you would like to generate links. Make Sure Your Pages Are Being Indexed by Google You can check if all your pages are being indexed by Google. Go to the particular page and choosing "Cached Snapshot of Page" ~ if there is no cache, your page is not indexed. If the page is new, then perhaps its a matter of time. If the page is important has not been indexed for a couple of months, analyze your navigation structure. Consider linking to this page from your other important (and high PageRanking) pages and see what happens
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