Covers the basics on how Google understand a query and chooses which result to rank in the organic results

1. How Does Google Interpret a
Search Query for Ranking
Purposes
Presented by Eli Schwartz
Confidential

2. Introduction
• SEO: Search Engine Optimization is the concept of
following search engine best practices
• NOT a process of tricking search crawlers
• Architecture and method of presenting information that
both search engines AND users can understand
• Search engines are in the business of satisfying their
users, free traffic is a byproduct of that mission
Confidential
2

3. Organic vs Paid Search
10% of Clicks
90% of Clicks

4. Interesting facts about Google’s Algorithm
• Greatest market share in most of the world
• 200 Primary Metrics
• Updated hundreds of times per month
• Humans “supposedly” do not interfere with
the algorithm
• Google uses data from all of its properties
• Google’s first name was “Backrub”

5. “With your permission you give us more
information about you, about your friends,
and we can improve the quality of our
searches. We don't need you to type at all.
We know where you are. We know where
you've been. We can more or less now what
you're thinking about.”
Eric Schmidt in an interview with The Atlantic, October
2010

6. Google’s mind reading

7. Language preferences
Language preferences override
ccTLD of Google site

8. Language differences

9. What does Google know about you?
https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/view

10. Personal history

11. Without Personal history

12. How to browse without cookies and history
Browser
Shortcut
Chrome
Ctrl (CMD) + Shift + N
Firefox
Ctrl(CMD) + Shift + P
IE
Ctrl + Shift + P
Safari
Click Safari > Private Browsing > OK

13. Where are you?

14. Query “Warriors” – located in Palo Alto

15. Query “Warriors” – located in Baltimore

16. Query for Giants

17. Your connections

18. Google Instant

19. Suggestions and related

20. Spelling correction

21. Plurals

22. Synonyms

23. Non-text content

24. What does the query mean?
Design
Recipe
Book
Brand

25. Questionnaire – ambiguous term

26. Modified head term

27. Where is the keyword used: Title

28. Where is the keyword used: H1

29. Where is the keyword used: Content

30. International challenge
No
exact
match
(yet)!

31. Domain authority

32. Domain authority visualized

33. Internal links visualized
United Airlines routes

34. Anchor text

35. Relevancy

36. Performance for Google’s users

37. Publish date (Freshness)
Recent
content

38. Eventually…. Author-based ranking

39. Constant Google algo updates
•
•
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•
•
•
•
•
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Attribution
Panda
Freshness
Search plus your world
Ads above the fold
Venice
Penguin
Knowledge graph
DMCA

40. Google rankings myths
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Page Rank correlates to rankings
Domain age or TLD (.org, .com, .us)
SEO = stuff valuable keywords in meta tags
More links > than content
Links from .Gov or .Edu automatically lead to better rankings
You always need to rank #1
Google just ranks text content
Brands have it easy

41. Questions?