How do Search Engines rank web pages?
Search engines rank web pages according to the software’s understanding of the web
page’s relevancy to the term being searched. To determine relevancy, each search engine
follows its own group of rules. The most important rules are
• The location of keywords on your web page; and
• How often those keywords appear on the page (the frequency)
For example, if the keyword appears in the title of the page, then it would be considered
to be far more relevant than the keyword appearing in the text at the bottom of the page.
Search engines consider keywords to be more relevant if they appear sooner on the page
(like in the headline) rather than later. The idea is that you’ll be putting the most
important words – the ones that really have the relevant information – on the page first.
Search engines also consider the frequency with which keywords appear. The frequency
is usually determined by how often the keywords are used out of all the words on a page.
If the keyword is used 4 times out of 100 words, the frequency would be 4%.
Of course, you can now develop the perfect relevant page with one keyword at 100%
frequency - just put a single word on the page and make it the title of the page as well.
Unfortunately, the search engines don’t make things that simple.
While all search engines do follow the same basic rules of relevancy, location and
frequency, each search engine has its own special way of determining rankings. To make
things more interesting, the search engines change the rules from time to time so that the
rankings change even if the web pages have remained the same.
One method of determining relevancy used by some search engines (like HotBot and
Infoseek), but not others (like Lycos), is the Meta tags. Meta tags are hidden HTML
codes that provide the search engine spiders with potentially important information like
the page description and the page keywords.
Meta tags are often labeled as the secret to getting high rankings, but Meta tags alone will
not get you a top 10 ranking. On the other hand, they certainly don’t hurt. Detailed
information on meta-tags and other ways of improving search engine ranking is given
later in this chapter.
In the early days of the web, webmasters would repeat a keyword hundreds of times in
the Meta tags and then add it hundreds of times to the text on the web page by making it
the same color as the background. However, now, major search engines have algorithms
that may exclude a page from ranking if it has resorted to “keyword spamming”; in fact
some search engines will downgrade ranking in such cases and penalize the page.
Link analysis and ‘clickthrough’ measurement are certain other factors that are “off the
page” and yet crucial in the ranking mechanism adopted by some leading search engines.
This is quickly emerging as the most important determinant of ranking, but before we
study this, we must first look at the most popular search engines and then look at the
various steps you can take to improve your success at each of the stages – spidering,
indexing and ranking.
Search engines rank web pages according to the software’s understanding of the web
page’s relevancy to the term being searched. To determine relevancy, each search engine
follows its own group of rules. The most important rules are
• The location of keywords on your web page; and
• How often those keywords appear on the page (the frequency)
For example, if the keyword appears in the title of the page, then it would be considered
to be far more relevant than the keyword appearing in the text at the bottom of the page.
Search engines consider keywords to be more relevant if they appear sooner on the page
(like in the headline) rather than later. The idea is that you’ll be putting the most
important words – the ones that really have the relevant information – on the page first.
Search engines also consider the frequency with which keywords appear. The frequency
is usually determined by how often the keywords are used out of all the words on a page.
If the keyword is used 4 times out of 100 words, the frequency would be 4%.
Of course, you can now develop the perfect relevant page with one keyword at 100%
frequency - just put a single word on the page and make it the title of the page as well.
Unfortunately, the search engines don’t make things that simple.
While all search engines do follow the same basic rules of relevancy, location and
frequency, each search engine has its own special way of determining rankings. To make
things more interesting, the search engines change the rules from time to time so that the
rankings change even if the web pages have remained the same.
One method of determining relevancy used by some search engines (like HotBot and
Infoseek), but not others (like Lycos), is the Meta tags. Meta tags are hidden HTML
codes that provide the search engine spiders with potentially important information like
the page description and the page keywords.
Meta tags are often labeled as the secret to getting high rankings, but Meta tags alone will
not get you a top 10 ranking. On the other hand, they certainly don’t hurt. Detailed
information on meta-tags and other ways of improving search engine ranking is given
later in this chapter.
In the early days of the web, webmasters would repeat a keyword hundreds of times in
the Meta tags and then add it hundreds of times to the text on the web page by making it
the same color as the background. However, now, major search engines have algorithms
that may exclude a page from ranking if it has resorted to “keyword spamming”; in fact
some search engines will downgrade ranking in such cases and penalize the page.
Link analysis and ‘clickthrough’ measurement are certain other factors that are “off the
page” and yet crucial in the ranking mechanism adopted by some leading search engines.
This is quickly emerging as the most important determinant of ranking, but before we
study this, we must first look at the most popular search engines and then look at the
various steps you can take to improve your success at each of the stages – spidering,
indexing and ranking.
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