No one talks about why Google algorithms are really powerful

What are Google Algorithms and why should I care?

The internet is massive and when you do a search on Google, there are thousands and sometimes millions of web pages with helpful information.

Google figures out which results to show you by organising the information in our Search index. The search index is like a library, and contains more information than all the libraries in the world combined.

Google uses software known as ‘web crawlers’ to discover web pages. These Crawlers look at each web page and also follows links on those pages. They go from link to link, and bring data about those web pages back to Google’s servers.

In less than a fraction of a second, Google’s search algorithms sort through hundreds of billions of web pages in the Search index, to find the most relevant, useful results for what you are looking for.

Google narrows down information into specialized searches. This means you can browse through different categories including:

• Images
• Maps
• News articles or video footage
• Products or services you can purchase online
• Content in books
• Videos and
• Scholarly papers

For example, if you search for my name “Caria Watt” in the news category, the results include articles that I have written in featured online magazines, that contain those keywords. The results look completely different from Google’s normal search which will show you my website, images of me modelling, social media posts, podcasting and videos.

Like all search engines, Google uses a special algorithm to determine its search results called ‘PageRank’, which assigns each web page a relevancy score.

A web page’s PageRank relevancy scores depends on the following factors:

1. Keyword frequency and location within the web page: When a keyword appears only once within the body of a page, it may receive a low score.
2. How long the web page has existed: People create new web pages every day, and not all of them stick around for very long. That’s why Google places more value on pages with an established history that has been around for many years.
3. The number of web pages that link back to your page (back links): Google looks at how many web pages link to your site to determine its relevance. Google also looks at back links to a web page as a vote.

The  best way to make sure your web page ranks high on Google’s search results is to publish great content, so that other sites want to link to your page.

The more back links your page gets, the higher its PageRank score is. If you attract the attention of sites with a high PageRank score, your score will increase quickly.

Google shares some facts about its algorithm, however the specifics are still a company secret. This helps Google to remain competitive with other search engines, and reduces the chances of someone finding out how to abuse the system.

However, its primary purpose is to help you find what you’re looking for on the internet quickly and easily.

If you want to learn more about Google algorithms and how you can boost your social media posts online join the waitlist for my Social Media Playbook course here: https://cariawatt.com/smp-waitlist

Image courtesy: UnSplash