Google Search Engine Ranking Algorithm Analysis
prepared by
Pan Wen, Pwqsoft Inc.
In the past year, Google has received wide press recognition and praise for the quality relevant results that they serve to web surfers. One of the major reasons for this is success is due to their PageRank Technology. Another major reason is that Google does not over-populate, or flood, their search results pages with two or three third-party databases like various other popular search engines.
If your are webmaster , you know that top ranking on Google brings free , steady and quality traffic to your web site. How to get top ranking on Google ? Why do your competitors win No.1 position ? All answer is anther querstion : what are main factors in Google ranking algorithm ?
The basis of this paper is to examine factors that Google might employ in their ranking algorithm of providing quality results. We conducted comprehensive ranking analysis for dozen high competitive keywords on Google, Our studies reveal what is the most important factor that takes to get #1 on Google.
Google is designed to provide higher quality search so as the Web continues to grow rapidly, information can be found easily. In order to accomplish this Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search.
Google use keyword proximity information to increase relevance a great deal.
When Google index web pages, each document is converted into a set of word
occurrences called hits. The hits record the word, position in document, an
approximation of font size, and capitalization. Google considers each hit to
be one of several different types (title, anchor, URL, plain text large font,
plain text small font, ...), each of which has its own type-weight. hits occurring
close together in a document are weighted higher than hits occurring far apart.
The hits from the multiple hit lists are matched up so that nearby hits are
matched together. For every matched set of hits, a proximity is computed. The
proximity is based on how far apart the hits are in the document. Counts are
computed not only for every type of hit but for every type and proximity. Count-weights
increase linearly with counts at first but quickly taper off so that more than
a certain count will not help.
PageRank is a technology that scores web pages by how "important" they are in relation to other web pages.
The best way to explain Google's PageRank System is to quote directly from Google's website:
"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 more than sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; 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"."
It was well known that Google base search engine ranking on several fators, PageRank, title , text and inbound links . Our study task is to find the most important factor in Google ranking and the effective way to increase website ranking .
We conducted comprehensive ranking studies on Google. To make the results of our studies as reliable as possible, we search for dozen high competitive keywords on Google, these were high competitive keywords which bid price in Overture is from $1 to $5.
For each keyword, We analyzed link popularity of the top 10 web pages , Both the number, Pagerank and anchor text of links pointing at these pages are taken into account. we don't analyze the HTML code of the top 10 web pages. because we don't think keyword proximity of web page have a high degree of weight for high competitive keyword.
Our conclusion is that anchor text is the most important factor in Google ranking Algorithm.
First of all , bear in mind. The principle of google ranking algorithm is to keep search result integrity, make human tampering with search results extremely difficult.
We define the degree of importance pertaining to each of these factors primarily according to google's ranking principles and the actual search results . Below is a summary of these factors listed in order of importance.
1 Anchor text from Yahoo and Dmoz
Goolge love anchor text very much , especially from Yahoo and Dmoz. Google think anchors text often provide more accurate descriptions of web pages than the pages themselves , Yahoo and Dmoz list was maintained by human , it is the most difficult to tamper ,so it is most important in Google ranking algorithm .
Bear in mind , Yahoo and Dmoz list is powerful if your keywords in anchor text, otherwise it only improves page PageRank and useless for relevance improvement. example in case study 2 and case study 3 .
2 Anchor text
Google use anchor text mostly because anchor text often provide more accurate descriptions of web pages than the pages themselves. Anchor text provide a lot of information for making relevance judgments and quality filtering. The use of link text as a description of what the link points to helps the search engine return relevant (and to some degree high quality) results.
There are many cases prove that anchor text is more important than PageRank. such as case study 1. It is the most efficaciously way to increase ranking by building more inbound links with keywords in anchor text.
3 PageRank
The analysis of link structure via PageRank allows Google to evaluate the quality of web pages. High PageRank means more "important". but important pages mean nothing to improve ranking if they don't match the query.
4 Keyword Proximity
The general rule of thumb is that the more competitive a particular keyword is, the less of a role on-the-page keyword proximity plays. Using popular, competitive terms to try and analyze on-the-page factors simply doesn't work. Webmaster can get top ranking for only less competitive keyword by increasing keyword proximity . It is useless for high competitive keywords.
| No. | Link | Page Rank |
| 1 | http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm | 6 |
| 2 | http://www.matriciel.co.uk/linkmachine/ | 6 |
| 3 | http://topsearchengineranking.net/ | 5 |
| 4 | http://www.andrewlehman.com/ | 6 |
| 5 | http://www.netmechanic.com/promote.htm | 6 |
| 6 | http://www.search-engine-ranking.ws/ | 4 |
| 7 | http://www.1-search-engine-positioning.net/ | 6 |
| 8 | http://www.engineranking.com/ | 4 |
| 9 | http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/ | 5 |
| 10 | http://www.subia-search-engine-optimization.com/ | 6 |
No.1 http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm PR6 , click
here see links detail information
Link Statistics (anchor text march keyword)
| Inbound Links | Internal Link | ||||||
| PageRank | PR6 | PR5 | PR4 | PR3 | PR6 | PR5 | PR4 |
| Links Number | 1 | 7 | 11 | 2 | 2 | 19 | 6 |
No.6 http://www.search-engine-ranking.ws/ PR 4 , this site win No.4 with low PR4 . it gives a nice illustration that relevance is more important than PageRank. click here see links detail information
Link Statistics (anchor text march keyword)
| Inbound Links | Internal Link | ||||||
| PageRank | PR6 | PR5 | PR4 | PR3 | PR6 | PR5 | PR4 |
| Links Number | 1 | 2 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| No. | Link | Page Rank |
| 1 | http://1stcommerce.net/ | 6 |
| 2 | http://www.internet-merchant-account.com/ | 5 |
| 3 | http://www.merchantaccountgroup.com/ | 5 |
| 4 | http://www.her-merchant-account.com/ | 5 |
| 5 | http://www.accept-credit-cards.com/ | 5 |
| 6 | http://www.usa-merchantaccount.com/ | 5 |
| 7 | http://www.lamerchantaccount.com/ | 5 |
| 8 | http://www.wdvl.com/Internet/Commerce/MerchantAccounts/ | 5 |
| 9 | http://www.0-activationcost.com/ | 5 |
| 10 | https://www.1stcommerce.net/application.html | 6 |
No.1 http://1stcommerce.net/ PR6, click here see links
detail information
Link Statistics (anchor text march keyword)
| Inbound Links | Internal Link | ||||||
| PageRank | PR6 | PR5 | PR4 | PR3 | PR6 | PR5 | PR4 |
| Links Number | 11 | 34 | 72 | 31 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
No.2 http://www.internet-merchant-account.com/ PR 5 , This gives a nice illustration of the power of Dmoz anchor text. they only have 2 inbound links from Dmoz, then win No.2 for these high competitive keyword.
Links Detail (anchor text march keyword)
| Type | Page Rank | Link |
| Dmoz | 5 | http://dmoz.org/Business/Financial_Services/Merchant_Services/Other_Payment_Systems/ |
| Dmoz | 5 | http://dmoz.org/Business/Financial_Services/Merchant_Services/Sales_Agents/ |
| 6 | http://directory.google.com/Top/Business/Financial_Services/Merchant_Services/Sales_Agents/ |
| No. | Link | Page Rank |
| 1 | http://www.imc.org/ube-sol.html | 6 |
| 2 | http://www.imc.org/ube-def.html | 6 |
| 3 | http://www.caube.org.au/ | 7 |
| 4 | http://www.network-2001.net/ | 5 |
| 5 | http://emailingads.com/bulk-email/ | 4 |
| 6 | http://www.instantbulkemail.com/ | 6 |
| 7 | http://www.1-bulk-email.com/ | 5 |
| 8 | http://www.bulk-board.com/ | 6 |
| 9 | http://www.marketing-2000.net/ | 5 |
| 10 | http://www.bulk--email.com/ | 4 |
No.1 http://www.imc.org/ube-sol.html PR6, it listed in Dmoz and have some pr6/pr5
link. click here see links detail information
Link Statistics (anchor text march keyword)
| Dmoz | Google Dir | Inbound Links | Internal Link | ||||||
| PageRank | PR5 | PR5 | PR6 | PR5 | PR4 | PR3 | PR7 | PR5 | PR4 |
| Links Number | 1 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
No.4 http://www.network-2001.net/ PR 5 , this site win #4 because listed in yahoo,Google Dir with title "bulk emai marketing", It also is No.1 for "bulk email marketing" on google.
Links Detail (anchor text march keyword)
| Type | No. | Page Rank | Link | Anchor Text |
| Yahoo | 1 | 4 | http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/ Marketing_and_Advertising/Direct_Marketing/Direct_Email/Software/ |
bulk email marketing |
| 1 | 6 | http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/E-mail/Marketing/ | bulk email marketing |
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