What is the Google Algorithm?

The Google Algorithm is actually a combination of different algorithms, and it is used to rank where each website page in its index should be shown when a search is performed for a specific query. In simpler terms, it’s what decides whether our “SEO Sydney” page should be ranked number 1 when someone searches for “search engine optimisation sydney”, or way down on page 10.

How does the Google Algorithm work?

Firstly, Google has crawlers that are continuously crawling the internet and indexing all the web pages it can find. As you can imagine, this list is astronomical and needs to be sorted and ranked; this is where the algorithm comes in.

The algorithm will look at many different areas (factors or signals as they are called) to decide what pages to show for a search and how to rank them. Some of the main factors or signals it will consider are:

The meaning of the search query

The algorithm must first decide what it believes the searcher is looking for when they do a search. This includes search intent, spelling, synonyms etc.

The relevance of the web page

Now Google understands what the searcher is looking for, it must decide which webpage has the most relevant content for the query.

The quality of the content

Just being relevant isn’t enough for Google. You can have pages that may answer your query, but it’s not easy to find it on the page, it’s covered in ads, or it’s written poorly (AI anyone). The algorithm considers how well written the page is, the quality of the information and how trustworthy it is. Google has an acronym for this; E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authority and Trustworthiness).

The user experience of the web page

The Google Algorithm will then look at how good the experience will be for the searcher if they click on the web page. This considers things like how quickly the page loads, whether it is mobile friendly and how well laid out the site and navigation is.

The context and settings

This is things like where you are located when searching, your search history, and your search settings.

The algorithm uses hundreds of different factors or signals to achieve all this, and the weight it places on each depends on the nature of the search (e.g. current info vs general info). After considering all these factors or signals, the algorithm decides where to rank each web page, for every search query.

So what are the hundreds of Factors and Signals in the algorithm?

This is where we’re going to disappoint you, as we don’t know. This is a closely held secret by Google, for good reason. Since the birth of Google, SEO specialists have tested different assumptions on these factors and signals, and when they uncover one, they start to use it to improve their rankings. Now this is all well and good if these people used their new knowledge responsibly and not to exploit it, but unfortunately this often isn’t the case. 

Let’s take link-building as an example.

The early Google Algorithm relied heavily on counting the number of links coming into a website. The idea was that a link was the online version of a referral in the real world. In other words, if a website owner really likes another webpage, they will link to it, so their visitors can find it and also benefit from it. However, when SEO specialists realised this, they started all types of link building schemes, with many of them being extremely spammy. The end result was that a terrible webpage could rank number 1 because of the links to it, whilst a great webpage didn’t rank because it had no links. 

Let’s take another example of keyword density.

Similar to links, in the early days of the Google Algorithm, it considered how many times a keyword or query was repeated on a webpage. After all, if a page is about SEO, then the more times that “SEO” is repeated, the more certain Google could be that the page was in fact about “SEO”. So what did our SEO experts do? They stated stuffing webpages with keywords. In some cases, they would even repeat the same keyword over and over again in a section and make the font colour the same as the background colour, so only Google could see them. Once again, we started getting really crappy webpages ranking high on Google.

So as these examples show, Google needs to keep their ranking signals a secret and only give guidelines, or else SEO specialists will simply focus on gaming the algorithm rather than actually delivering great content, leading to poor search results for the searcher.

Why are quality search results so important to Google?

The simple answer to this is money. Google makes the majority of their billions of dollars from Google Ads. However, for Google Ads to make money, they need to be seen by as many people as possible. And you guessed it, Google search is where people see the majority of these ads. So if the search experience is poor and not giving us what we are looking for, we’ll move to Bing, or DuckDuckGo, or one of the other smaller search engines. If this happens, Google revenue falls. So they need to ensure their search engine is the best search engine out there.

What are Google Algorithm updates?

As we’ve already discussed, SEO experts are always testing assumptions to try and find ways that they can game the Google Algorithm. When they do, and the various strategies and tactics become widespread, the actual search results become spammy and don’t deliver the experience we expect when we do a search in Google. So Google tweaks the algorithm to weaken these tactics and deliver better search results.

Furthermore, as technology is further developed, Google works out better ways to run their algorithm, so make improvements to it. One of the big changes has been the introduction of machine learning (or AI). Whilst everyone thinks ChatGPT was the pioneer of AI, Google has been using AI in their algorithm since the early 2000s. In 2015 the introduced a platform that helped understand queries better and in 2019 they included a platform that helped understand language better (nuances and context).

What impact do Google Algorithm updates have on your website?

Like every change in life, there are generally winners and losers. Whether the impact on your website is positive or negative, depends on how your website has been built. If you’ve done all the things that we mentioned above correctly and strived to build a website with great content that answered the search queries of your website visitors; then you’ll most likely benefit. If you’ve built your website with spammy, weak content and just built dodgy links to it; then you’ll most likely suffer.

Different types of Google Algorithm updates

So what are the different types of algorithm updates? There are generally four different types of updates, these being:

Core Updates

These are general updates to the algorithm to improve search quality, and often are aimed at how Google understands and ranks web pages. They happen a few times a year and Google doesn’t generally give much information about them, other than it is a core update. Definitely impacts on overall website rankings.

Spam Updates

As the name suggests, these updates are aimed at removing websites from the index that use spammy techniques. These updates are the ones that put an end to keyword stuffing and a lot of the dodgy linking practices. If you do dodgy SEO, then these updates cause many sleepless nights.

Specific Updates

These are updates targeting specific areas of the algorithm. Some example of these are how Google treats reviews on a website, reward websites with great user experience or reward great content.

Unconfirmed Updates

Google will at times perform algorithm updates and not communicate them. The only way we know there has been an update is from the myriad of changes in rankings observed throughout the SEO community.

If you want to know the exact updates and when they have been implemented, go direct to the source here: https://status.search.google.com/products/rGHU1u87FJnkP6W2GwMi/history

What have you learned about the Google Algorithm?

So now you have a good understanding of how the Google Algorithm works to rank your website and how the many updates throughout the year can impact it. But if you are only going to take away one nugget of information, make sure it’s about the importance of focussing on positive (or white hat) SEO, so you can sleep well at night. We’ve seen many websites over the years that have done dodgy SEO, crash and burn. Sure, they may have shone bright for a while, but inevitably the Google Algorithm will catch up with them. Imagine you’ve spent years and thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars, building your website with dodgy SEO, only to have it all disappear after one update.

References:

https://www.google.com/intl/en_au/search/howsearchworks/how-search-works/ranking-results/

https://developers.google.com/search/blog

https://ahrefs.com/seo/glossary/google-algorithm

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history/