I originally posted this to my blog but then thought it may be appropriate and of interest here as well.

In a new patent application filed December 2003 and made available to the public today, Google gives clues to the changes that began with the Florida Update in November 2003.

The Document is titled "Information Retrieval Based On Historical Data" and basically outlines all the ways Google would like to use your site's past history in determining its present ranking. The document also makes clear that Google now takes a whole site into consideration when ranking unlike PageRank which just considered individual pages.

Some quick points that I jotted down include...

- The inception date and history of a domain, DNS Records, site, content, links, link text, changes, traffic etc. are all tracked (or will be) and are taken into consideration when ranking a site.
- There are different ranking criteria used to evaluate different keyword queries.
- Google puts a great deal of attention on using many different ways to find link exchanges, paid links, doorway pages - anything that appears to be unnatural is now or soon or will be caught and penalized.
- Penalties for acquiring links too fast or too slow, also for having many links with the same link text or different link text
- Commercial queries treated differently. Sites targeting commercial keywords are automatically suspected of spamming.
- Changes in your traffic - up or down - may not be a good thing for your site.
- How often a page is selected from search results and how long visitors stay there compared to other sites is taken into consideration.
- How your site ranks over a long period of time is tracked. A sudden increase in your ranking would lead Google to look more closely to see if you are spamming.
- Age of the domain and how long you registered it for is important. Spammers often just register a domain for just one year. A domain registered for 10 years is likely not a spammer.
- The quality of the advertisers on your site is important.
- Changes in the topics covered or an increase in the number of topics your site covers would be a cause for concern.
- How often a site is found from Bookmarks is important. One way such data is tracked is by using non-browser sources - such as the Google Toolbar.

There are many other points not mentioned here so you may want to read the document for yourself. From my experience some of the items talked about have already been implemented and others have not yet been. At least we now have a confirmation of the direction Google is taking - and many theories (sometimes portrayed as fact) have been dispelled.

What are your thoughts on all this?

Very interesting read. Those ideas have been partially implemented but many are still being worked on. It will ensure better, cleaner and untainted search results. A lot of damage has been done by black and grey hat seo tactics and some major changes are about to occur. Especially now with the search engine war between Google, Yahoo! and msn (aol is about to throw it's head in the ring as well).
It will be very interesting to be a part of the upcoming changes

Thank you for your summary which confirms my own thoughts about Google moving closer to natural indexing which will account for how, when and where links are added. I think the new catch phase will become "Natural SEO"

Very good Google advice. Many SEO professionals are still playing with tricks and quick fix strategies. Here is a link, easy and basic. http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

And for those folks that are a little upset with poor results online: http://websitefrustrated.blogspot.com
rk

Deleted off-topic promotional post

Back to the topic: the face of seo will change, I agree with frobn. I believe the industry of seo will move more towards coaching like in my clients' cases it already does. Tricking search engines is not the way to go.
I myself will be happy seeing a lot of the sites in the results pages gone over time. Making a quality web site with quality content is a must.
You are more likely to have quality sites link to you naturally. it is a snowball effect that kicks in when you focus on networking the right way rather than trying to sneak in thru the backdoor.

Like we have just witnessed here

The problem is that ever since November 2003 Google's results have shown very little in the way of quality websites with quality content - at least as far as commercial results (including real estate sites) are concerned. So, they still have a long way to go.

It sort of reminds me if the old days when AltaVista was king and folks rose to the top by merely repeating keywords in their meta tags. AltaVista let it be known that any site caught using such tactics would be penalized and the same warm, fuzzy, quality content discussions took place at that time. The problem was that it took AltaVista well over two years before it stopped promoting sites that were spamming - and those of us that followed the rules saw our positions drop for two years - because it was all a scare tactic.

It is best to wait until Google actually gives sites with quality content ( and no suspect link strategies) good rankings before abandoning what works for you now.

Having said that, I have some long term SEO clients that rank very well (always have) in highly competitive categories with very few incoming links and no link exchanges. So, link exchanges really have never been necessary to rank well - you just need an old site that has been optimized and has a handful of good incoming links. Quality content is optional for ranking purposes

Very true. A site which has been indexed for a while without getting penalized, does get priority from Google. It is the new sites which have a problem getting ranked.

Google seems to be afraid of new sites and who knows how they will integrate them into their algorithm when it's time to make some changes.

I dont know that a "handful of good incoming links" will do it for most sites, especially those in the competitive area of real estate. We are competing for competitive keywords etc that draw up to $4 per click. At this stage of competition the number one site has thousands of links. Link exchanging can be a useful tool if understood and used properly IMHO.

Excellent insight. Could it be that Google cares little about commercial sites ranking well? If this is the case, and it may very well be, doesn't it also make Google ads for commercial sites much more attractive, and great for gooles' bottom line. Over the next several months maybe we should examine high ranking real estate sites for their content. If google can not deliver decent results based on content then it is only a matter of time before there is a massive shift to other search engines. That, of course is, IF (big IF) the other SEs become better.

I for one think Google is very happy that commercial sites are being forced into using their Adwords product because of Google's behavior since Nov. 2003. As a result, every quarter they show an increase in Adwords revenue which keeps their shareholders happy. Heaven help them once the public starts demanding some of the good results that made them such a popular search engine to begin with - and their Adwords revenue starts declining! Inktomi and Altavista both went the "crappy results increases revenue" route and it did not work for them -I doubt it will work for Google either.


WeRASkitzzo, the sites with good rankings and just a handful of incoming links also have only a couple of outgoing links - so as far as search engines are concerned they have more incoming than outgoing links. That goes all the way back to this post\'s remarks about sites that survived November 2003.

The finding that true reciprocal links may be of no benefit (cancel each other) out seems more evident with this new patent application's comments on linking.

I personally use G for non-commercial searches and the new MSN for commercial ones.

many people do, traffic from Yahoo! and msn seems to convert better into sales/leads for that exact same reason.

Very interesting. I guess they are getting tired of having to do a manual update to remove the spammy/black hat sites. A very logical move for them, since then will be universal and a lot of the bs going will be caught right out of the gate.

I am starting to wonder how serious msn (and to some extent Yahoo!) really are about removing spam. So far they hve not put a lot of energy into it. (or so it seems)