How Google Works

Google is the most important search engine for Australian website owners. Statistics suggest it carries out over 85% of searches undertaken by Australian Internet users each day. To effectively market your website in Google you need to have a basic understanding of how Google works. Without a basic understanding you will never have realistic goals on what is achievable (and what isn't) in this vital search engine.

When Google launched back in 1997 it changed the face of search engine marketing. One of the main reasons for this revolution was the unique range of factors that Google considered when determining where particular websites would rank on given search queries. Outlined below is an introduction to these factors. We have broken this into two main areas of consideration:

• PageRANK™ - This is the weighting, or importance, that Google places on a web page, regardless of the content on the page.
• Algorithm - These are the factors that Google considers on a page, to determine the relevance of the content on that page in relation to the search term.

PageRank™ (What is an important website?)

The core element of Google and one that underpins how a website ranks is a technology called PageRank™. Here is what Google themselves have written about it:
"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."

Now in layman's terms:

Google regards links from an external website to your website as a positive thing. They see a link as the online equivalent to a traditional word of mouth referral. eg, if a website links to The Web Showroom, it is likely a commendation or recommendation that we build good quality websites for Australian business.

However it isn't the sheer volume of links that Google takes into account, but rather a mixture of volume and quality. Google knows that any tech savvy website owner could direct thousands of meaningless links to their website, but might struggle to get a link off a quality website. In order to determine what a quality link is and what it isn't, Google assigns every site in its directory a PageRank™ ranging from 0 to 10. The PageRank on a web page is determined by how many quality links that page has directed towards it. The higher the PageRank™, the better it is regarded by Google. Therefore the higher the PageRank of a website that links to your website, the more weighting Google will place on this link. To take an extreme example, 10,000 links to your website from a PageRank™ 0 website is unlikely to mean more than 1 link from a PageRank™ 10 website:

In practice, this means that it will take time (and work) to build your website up to a place where you have a good number of high quality links pointing towards your website. For example, if you are selling mobile phones you will face an uphill battle to convince Google that your website is as important as the Nokia homepage. The Nokia website has likely been around for years and with thousands of quality links pointing towards it.

The Algorithm (What is a relevant website?)

Although PageRank™ underpins Google search results, it does not, in and of itself, determine where websites rank on particular search phrases. To determine what is the most relevant website for a certain search term, eg 'web design', Google uses a highly secretive algorithm utilising text-matching techniques. Here is a brief reference to this from Google:

"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."

This algorithm is constantly changing and very few people know exactly what weighting Google gives to each of the elements of a website. It is generally believed that there are well over 200 factors that Google takes into account when ranking a website on a given search term. Some of these are widely known (even through Google's patent) whilst others are guess work. Here are some examples of factors that, it is commonly believed, Google takes into account when ranking a website (in no particular order):

• Keywords in the websites URL
• Age of the website
• Keywords in Domain name
• Keywords in page title
• Keywords in meta description
• Keyword repetition in text
• Keyword in header tags
• Keywords proximity to each other
• The order of keyword(s)
• Prominence of keywords (early on a page)
• Keywords in link text (to the page / from page)
• Internal linking within a website
• Link stability (not always changing links)
• Page size

• Domain extension (.com.au, .edu.au, .net)
• Hyphens in URL
• Freshness of page (regular updates)
• URL length
• Keywords in alt-text
• Bolding
• Text size of keywords
• All links on page must work
• Good quality links
• Age of links
• Site listed in directories
• Time users spend on your website
• Click through rate onto your website
• Number of users that bookmark your site

Being Penalised

Google's success is simple. It provides millions of people with great information everyday. For that simple reason Google wants the most relevant websites to appear towards the top of its search results when a query is run. Google therefore heavily penalises websites that it believes are fooling the system in order to artificially improve search engine results. Here are some areas where website owners can get into trouble either through deception or simply a poorly optimised website:

• Text presented in graphic form
• Links from poor quality websites / affiliates
• Links to poor quality websites / affiliates
• Over-optimisation (overuse of header tags / keyword stuffing)
• Poor language or racist language
• Stealing images / text from other websites
• Excessive javascript

• Excessive use of flash
• Use of frames
• Single pixel links
• Buying links to inflate PageRank
• Cloaking
• Invisible text
• Hosting unreliability

This is a very brief overview of some of the factors that Google takes into account when returning a search query. For further reading, a website that is possibly the finest resource in the area can be found here: http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm