The Rank Magic Blog

How Google Ranks Links

4/19/05 ::: As we point out in many places on RankMagic.com, Google heavily relies on incoming links when it comes to ranking web sites. In addition to the sheer number of links and their anchor texts, the recently released Google patent specification shows possible ways how Google might use historical link information to further evaluate links.

For example, Google might record the date they first found a link and even record the life span of a link and the speed at which a new web site gets links.

The patent specification indicates that Google might track this:

• Both the anchor text and the discovery date of links are recorded.
• Google might monitor the appearance and disappearance of a link over time.
• Google might monitor the growth rates of links.
• Google might monitor the changes in the anchor text of links (what the link actually says) over a given period of time.
• Google might monitor the rate at which new links to a web page appear and disappear.
• Google might record a distribution rating for the age of all links.
• Links with a long life span might get a higher rating than links with a short life span.
• Links from fresh pages might be considered more important.
• If a stale document continues to get incoming links, it will be considered fresh.
• Google doesn't expect that new web sites have a large number of links (but they do need some).
• If a new web site gets many new links, this will be tolerated if some of the links are from authorative sites.
• Google indicates that it is better if link growth remains constant and slow.
• Google indicates that it's best if anchor text varies as much as possible among incoming links.
• Google indicates that a quick burst of new links may be a strong indicator of search engine spam.

What does this mean to your web site?

If you participate in quick link exchange schemes or buy links to your web site so that you get many links at once, chances are that Google will see this as a spamming attempt and will penalize your rankings. It's far better for new links to appear in a natural way, a few at a time over an extended period of time.

Overture Name Going Away

4/18/05 ::: Yahoo!, which owns Overture dropped its Overture Services brand on Monday and renamed the unit Yahoo Search Marketing. The replacement of the Overture brand will take place in the U.S. market initially and other international markets will be re-branded later. Apparently Overture brand will remain active in Japan and Korea only.

PPC Prices Up 9% in March

4/17/05 ::: In the month of March alone, average prices for pay per click (PPC) listings rose 9%. That's an annual rate of increase of over 100%. If that rate continues, the value of high rankings in the natural or "organic" listings (the ones you don't pay for) will only increase.

Domain Registration Affects Rankings?

4/12/05 :::: Google's recent patent filing is revealing a lot about the factors Google may use now or in the future to rank web pages. Here's another little item that you can use to your advantage.

According to Google, good and valuable domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway or throwaway domains are very temporary and are seldom used for more than a year. (Doorway and throwaway domains are seen as unethical attempts to manipulate rankings and are frowned on by all search engines.) When ranking pages, Google considers the following domain-level factors:

• the length of the domain registration (one year versus several years)
• the address of the web site owner, the admin and the technical contact
• the stability of data and host company
• the number of pages on a web site (web sites must have more than one page)
• Google claims that they have a list of known bad contact information, name servers and IP addresses that helps them to find out whether a spammer is running a domain

Here are two concrete tips on how you can use this information to your advantage:

Bookmark Popularity?

4/10/05 :::: With all the attention being paid to the need for good link popularity, many folks are very busy scaring up new incoming links. Some techniques are valuable, and others aren't - like link farms and reciprocal links among unrelated web sites created just for the PageRank impact of another link. The search engines are hard at work figuring out how to identify and discount links that aren't a fair measure of a page's true reputation.

The search engines may have another trick up their sleeves. Apparently one of Google's recent patents discusses the value of factoring into a site's reputation rating the number of individuals who have placed a bookmark to that site in their browser. Of course the subject is fraught with privacy implications, but there are a number of ways they could deal with such issues. There's an interesting discussion here.

Is it true? I don't think it is. Yet. Nevertheless, anticipation is invaluable in Internet marketing. I think we'll start seeing more "Bookmark This Site!" buttons appearing soon.

Link Popularity Getting Harder?

4/7/05 :::: New incoming links are very important to web site owners who hope to have potential customers find them in the search engines. It's generally agreed that having lots of incoming links, especially if they're topically related, provide a boost to a site's search rankings. Our experience bears that out.

It's beginning to look like Google may be employing a dampening filter on new incoming links. It seems that Google does not give immediate full credit for an incoming link. Observations seem to indicate that Google provides only a partial immediate credit, by running new links through a filter. Only as the link ages, and stays linked to the site for long enough, does the target site's Google PageRank and link popularity receive full credit for the link.

That total link value and PageRank credit is further measured for link theme relevance (how related the link source is to the page it links to), making the process of link building much more difficult than in the past.

4/6/05 :::: There's a pretty neat new search tool out there that compares results for a given keyword in Yahoo and Google, both at the same time. It's fun to play with once in awhile, and can be surprisingly informative. Check it out at YaGoohoogle.com. [Oops! Sorry, but as of August 1, 2005, this domain seems to be inactive.]

UPDATE ::: As of July 1, Yagoohoogle seems to be closed. A similar service is now provided at Twingine.