How search engines rank web pages

Comments | Posted by Lee Odden on Sep 29th, 2005 in Online Marketing

As time goes on it seems there are more and more misconceptions and outdated ideas floating out in forums, old articles and even in some presentations about how search engines rank web pages. On occasion, a well-meaning SEO will write an article that describes what is currently understood as search engine ranking methods and I’ve included two examples here.

The first is an interesting list of Google Ranking factors I’ve had bookmarked for a while which lists quite a few considerations on how Google (may or may not) rank web pages. Some of the info comes from observations and experience and some comes from a review of Google patents.

The second is a post from yesterday on Rand Fishkin’s SEOmoz site where he lists an excellent article on overall Search Engine Ranking Factors. As usual, Rand’s work is exceptionally well done and professional. Danny doesn’t necessarily agree with all of them, and that’s fine. SEO is a moving target and search engines want to keep it that way.

I would note that Rand had presented at SES San Jose, a very good Google’s Historical Data patent which he has written about as well.

Regardless of the details of particular search engine ranking factors, the three things that I have found to always be true in regard to rankings, at least since Google has been around, are: indexing, content and links. Here’s a short article on better rankings that elaborates on that concept.

Tags: rankings, search engine rankings, search, Google, search engine optimization