Thursday 10 May 2007

How Google Ranks Websites

By NetRegistry News
by Jim Pretin

Google is by far the most important search engine on the net. To rise to the top of their search engine, you need to improve your link popularity and you need to understand how they measure your link popularity (over 50% of all search engine traffic comes from Google, and if you can rise to the top, you will likely rise to the top of all the other search engines as well).

Link Popularity
Link popularity is defined as the number of sites that are linking to your site. Some websites have thousands or even millions of sites linking to them, while others might have only a few. The search engines use the number of inbound links your site has as a measure of how important your site is, which translates into your search engine ranking.

The actual number of links to your site is not the only variable used to calculate your link popularity. The search engines also examine the relevance of the links to the subject matter of your site. For example, if a website that sells vitamins has 4,000 inbound links, but the source of most of the links are websites that have nothing to do with vitamins, then the algorithm that search engines use to determine link popularity will take that into account, and the link popularity score will not be very good.

Quality not Quantity
It is possible for a website with a relatively small number of quality inbound links to be ranked higher than a site with a bunch of irrelevant or insignificant links. If I have a website that offers vitamins, and I have 800 quality inbound links, then I might receive a much higher search engine ranking than another vitamin site that has 3,000 links that stem from link farms or Free For All (FFA) pages.

If you try to acquire inbound by using link farms or FFA pages, not only will it hurt your search engine ranking, but you might get permanently removed from the search engine listings. Links farms are sites where you can instantly exchange links with all the sites listed in that directory. FFA pages are pointless link directories. The search engines usually discount any links that come from either of these sources.

Now that we understand what link popularity is and how it works, we need to look specifically at how Google measures it. They use a number of variables in their algorithm to calculate your overall link score. The higher your score, the higher you will be ranked in the search listings.
One factor that Google uses in their algorithm, obviously, is the total number of sites linking to you. The more links you have, the higher your score will be. However, their algorithm is a little more complicated than that, and it is possible for a website with fewer links to be ranked higher than a website that has more links.

Relevancy is important
The reason for this is because Google also measures the quality of your links. If your website is about vitamins, and the site linking to you is a video game site, then that is not considered a quality link. The link still helps your score, but the link would help your score much more if it were from a website whose subject matter is the same as yours.

Also, Google gives a higher score to a link if it comes from a page that has actual content that relates to your keywords. For example, if your site is about jewellery, and another jewellery website has posted a link to your site on their links page, that link is not as valuable as a link to your site coming from a blog or a message board where a lot of information about jewellery is being written or discussed.


Call Ion e-Business today for web design that adheres to search engine optimisation methodologies.

Andersons Real Estate

We're currently doing some web design work for Andersons Real Estate, the specialists in Mission Beach real estate. Anybody who has ever used the old one will know that, by their own admission, it's not very good. The old site was written with the biggest of all faux-pas when it comes to search engine optimisation: framesets. Framesets have the effect of giving the search engine looking at the site absolutely nothing to index. Now, as content is king when it comes to search engines you can probably see that framesets are BAD.

This is why we're so pleased with the results we've been getting while we've been performing some SEO work at the same time as the new site is under development. We've managed to get the old site up to 3rd in Google for the search term 'mission beach real estate'. When the new website goes live and Google actually has something to index we're expecting even better results.

The new site also has some powerful features not offered by any other agents in the area so watch the website over the next couple of weeks and you'll see what I mean: Andersons for Mission Beach real estate

Mission Beach Information Station

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Mission Beach Information Station for being my first client in the area. Historically, the businesses of Mission Beach have had a rough ride when trying to get any web development done and the support they have received has been atrocious. So, when I breezed into town and Kerrie and Steve took a punt on me they were risking a lot. I supposed it helped that I'd been working for the last 14 years on trading floors with the most demanding punters of the lot but still, they took a risk.

Well, that risk has paid off for them. Their site is now newly designed and stable, they can update it in-house through their content management system, they have a real-time Mission Beach accommodation booking facility, they are receiving extra revenue from various ideas that we came up with and, more importantly, we're gradually moving them up the ladder in Google. Search engine optimisation is probably the most important part of getting your site noticed - unfortunately, it takes time for your changes to take effect. Google has an awful lot of web pages to reindex - the whole world in fact - so you have to be patient and trust in the guy doing your SEO.

There are some more changes in the pipeline for the Mission Beach Information Station that will make the website stand out from the rest so keep your eyes on it. Kerrie and Steve are on a mission!

Guessing Robots Find Their Way

Robots that use "guesswork" to navigate through unfamiliar surroundings are being developed by US researchers.

The mobile machines create maps of areas they have already explored and then use this information to predict what unknown environments will be like. Trials in office buildings showed that the robots were able to find their way around, New Scientist reported. Making robots that can navigate without prior knowledge of their surroundings was a huge challenge, the team said.
Most mobile robots do this using a technique called SLAM (simultaneous localisation and mapping), whereby they build up a map of their unknown environment, using various sensors, whilst keeping track of their current position at the same time. But this technique is slow because a robot must explore a great deal of terrain to know its precise location. It is also prone to errors.

So the team from Purdue University, in Indiana, has developed a new approach. The robots create a 2D map of the area they are exploring, but when they come to an unknown area, they check back through this information to see if it seems similar to any areas that have already explored. They do this using an algorithm - a step-by-step problem solving procedure.

Professor George Lee from Purdue University, in Indiana, who carried out the research, said: "The robot gets to a new area and thinks: 'Have I seen these sorts of things before?' Then it goes back and looks at its stored data. "It might then think: 'Hey, this is very, very similar to something I've seen before, I don't need to explore that room or corner.' And this saves time for it to explore other areas."

He said it was similar to the human navigational process, where we build up a "mental map" of our surroundings by recognising familiar sights.