HomeGoogle Search Quality
To start with here is a quick update on the Microsoft/Yahoo takeover front - It never happened in the end! Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed Microsoft’s position on the acquisition of Yahoo in one simple and direct phrase– we are no longer interested. Instead Microsoft is seeking some form of partnership with the search engine company, but no further news on that front yet. What I want to know is what happened to Microsoft’s treats of a hostile takeover bid? Looks like they have lost their bite, as their threats were empty ones. Someone surely will have to take the full brunt of that embarrassing show of force. I guess after wiping the egg off his face, Steve Ballmer is wondering whether he will be the sacrificial pawn.
Right now to some new news!! This month the search engine optimisation (SEO) industry has been provided with some direct information regarding Google’s search quality. This was provided by Google’s Udi Manber, who is the VP of Engineering at Google in charge of Search Quality, in an official Google blog posting.
In his blog, Mr Manber aimed to provide a better picture regarding Google’s method of website ranking. He explained that Google is secretive about their algorithms for competitive reasons and the reason why they keep their ranking formulas so close to their chests is to also avoid abuse of their Search Engine.
He explained that more than one thousand programmer/scientist years have gone directly into the development of their ranking algorithms so these details of the ranking algorithms are what Google class as their own “crown jewels”.
But it looks like Google is trying to become less secretive. It appears Willy Wonka plans to open up the chocolate factory! Mr Manber stated that this blog would be one of many new blog posts which will be Googles attempt at educating the online community about new things, explain old things, give advice, spread news, and engage more interaction with the search engine company.
One interesting point that comes out of this blog posting was the fact that Google’s famous Page Rank is not used as much as it once was in the Google search algorithm and is only one cog in a much larger system which has many other models within it. This is an interesting fact for a search engine optimisation company like us because we do get a lot of clients who have read about Google Page Rank and wonder why, even though they have a higher Page Rank than their competitors they are still not above them in the listing for their specific keywords.
The blog also gives us an insight into the different teams that have been set up within Google. Mr Manber speaks of one team that’s has been set up to purely improve the user experience of the search engine. This is their only goal! The team runs automated evaluations every minute, periodic evaluations of our overall quality, and, most importantly, evaluations of specific algorithmic improvements. Apparently in 2007, Google launched more than 450 new improvements to their algorithm, which works out to be about 9 per week on average. And while we are still on the subject of Google Page Rank, Mr Manber said they had made significant changes to the Page Rank algorithm in January of this year. This just shows us the mammoth task we have as a search engine optimisation company to try to keep up with the likes of Google when optimisation websites. To keep websites relevant to Google and get our clients website on the first page of the search engines results isn’t a simple process and is a constant up hill challenge. Google is constantly looking for improvements in relevancy and so its our job to try to raise our game as well.
Another team at Google is dedicated to new features and new user interfaces. This team has made some visual advancement over the past year. The main one of which being Googles Universal Search, other changes include Google Notebook, Custom Search Engines, and of course, many improvements to iGoogle.
Then we come to Matt Cutts’ domain – Mr Manber explained that Google also has a whole team that concentrates on fighting webspam and other types of abuse. The teams aim is to spot new spam trends and work to counter those trends in scalable ways. This means those people out there that use Black Hat techniques to optimised their websites – be aware that Google is onto you! So don’t try hiding text on a page or set up off-topic pages with random keywords because Matt Cutts and his heavy mob will be onto you faster than you can say the word “Blacklisted”. This team also works closely with the Google Webmaster Central team, so they can share insights with everyone and also get feedback from website owners.
So there you have it, the first chapter in Google’s attempt at keeping us more informed and I for one am looking forward to more updates on search quality and search marketing in the up-and-coming months. The fact that Google has become more open and transparent can only be a good thing for search engine optimisation and the internet community as a whole. Let’s stay tuned in for the next chapter and I will try to keep you updated as best I can.
