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What Does Google Look for in Links?

Written by: Chris Padavick

Article Overview: Reading Google's patent filing it appears that they rely heavily on web site links and anchor text in their algorithm. The items below were some of the items the patent said they look for:

What Does Google Look for in Links?

Reading Google's patent filing it appears that they rely heavily on web site links and anchor text in their algorithm. The items below were some of the items the patent said they look for:

-- Tracking of the appearance and disappearance of links over specific times
-- Tracking of growth rates of links in other web sits
-- Tracking of anchor text and dates established and how they change over time
-- Older established links get a higher rating than newer less established links
-- Fresh pages might be considered more important
-- New web sites don't normally have a lot of links, but if they come from established web sites they will be tolerated
-- Older pages that don't change very often but have incoming links growth over time can be considered fresh
-- Burst link growth may indicate spamming of the index
-- Anchor text should vary and not be the same from all incoming sources
-- Web site link growth should be consistent and slow

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Article Tags: algorithm, anchor text, appearance, burst, disappearance, google, patent



Related Forum Posts
Re: Readers, Money or SEO? Which comes first? - Hi Chris, I like your passion on the subject; I would have to agree with you on this one. Our company is finding Google is starting to look at content more. Links & Link Value are far more important....but Google is giving link value to sites that have quality content. I read a leaked report from Google a while back that explained how Google manually reviews sites. They have 1,000's of outsourced employees that go through sites one by one and rank them on many different levels. Once a site like Mashable is ranked a certain way, that value sticks with them. That is why no matter what Mashable, techcrunch, Amazon, etc... put out they rank well for. Obviously they all have incredible links but Google has given them link value based on who they are. Obviously the idea of quality content is nothing new, just seems like it has gotten lost in the SEO world. Jeff
Re: How to do Link Building? - Link Building... Time-intensive. Frustrating. Sometimes confusing. Yet Unavoidable. Because ultimately, it's still the trump card for higher rankings. What happens to all those Wavers that think [i:1otfkny0]Getting Links = SEO[/i:1otfkny0] when that majority of the Google algo is devalued in various ways? Wavers built their fortunes on "links=seo". When that goes away, the Wavers have zero to hold on to. What will happen to the way search algorithms score links is already happening. The Google algo has become much more elegant and advanced, devaluing staggering amount of links that shouldn't count, and placing more emphasis on trusted links. And the trust and juice given by those links is then verified by elements like user data, domain age, and other relatively hard-to-spoof factors. toddbeld
Re: How can I promote my site? - There are various useful techniques for promoting a website. In SEO the techniques could be "white hat" and "black hat" techniques. White hat techniques includes following techniques to promote website as per the search engine rules. - Search Engine Friendly Tags - Website submission to Search Engines - Website Submission to Social Sites (Like twitter, Facebook) - Articles Promotion & Press Release Promotion - Quality Directories promotion - Contribution to Blogs, Forums Black hat techniques can reduce website strength in the search engine and can treat site as spam that could be following. - Keywords Stuffing. - Hidden Links - Maximum Links of unknown sites.
How Do You Check Google Ranking? - Now that Google is so responsive to your own search history, how can you get a good idea of what your Google ranking really is for your web pages? Whenever I check my ranking for specific keywords on Google, my web pages appear on the front page, or suspiciously high. My way around this is to check Google ranking via other computer Internet links, i.e., whenever I'm working in a library I will use a library computer to check. I check Google ranking before logging into my Gmail or other Google-related accounts. Does anybody else have any other tips for discovering your Google ranking? Nowadays, I check Bing.com for my webpage ranking as it gives a much less favourable (and so, I guess, "truer") ranking for my webpages than Google does...
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash


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