Google School: Lessons in Google Ranking!

The Google Search Quality Team have recently taken us back to school with a number of postings to teach us a little about the ins and out of the Google search engine.

So... it's time to get out your pen and paper (or laptop) and get ready for today's lesson: An Introduction to Google Ranking.

Our teacher for today will be Amit Singhal, Head of the Google Ranking Team, who has provided us with this lesson through The Official Google Blog.

Singhal explains that the Google ranking is a "collection of algorithms used to find the most relevant documents for a user query. We do this for hundreds of millions of queries a day, from a collection of billions and billions of pages."

This same collection of algorithms is used for other Google search services, like Google Images, Google News, YouTube and Google Maps.

I know you might be thinking that this is something we all know, but what Singhal has divulged is that the Google ranking is broken down into three core parts:

1. Best locally relevant results served globally - The best relevant results are provided in what Google calls "no query left behind."

2. Keep it simple - Google likes to keep it simple without compromising on the quality of results.

3. No manual intervention - The rankings are powered by algorithms that reflect the behavior and linking patterns of the people in the whole web community.

Click here to learn more.

If all of this is sounding quite basic, it's because it is. Singhal doesn't give any secrets of how you can get a better ranking for your webpage, but he does say that he will delve deeper into the technology behind ranking in later posts - so we will keep our eyes peeled and ears to the ground for you.

Posted by Courtney Mills at 12:51 AM GMT