The Next Generation of Google Rankings

Five years ago, ranking in Google was a different game than it is today.  It was easier.  Less competition, easier ways to manipulate Google’s algorithm (namely, by grabbing some easy links from free-for-all directories).  Today it’s still relatively easy in the right niche, but competition is increasing and Google has gotten pretty good about stomping out manipulative tactics.  What’s it going to take to rank tomorrow?  A good look at Google’s recent actions holds some clues.

Over the last several years, Google has expanded its product set a great deal. They acquired Blogger in 2003, introduced Gmail in 2004, released Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Talk, Google Reader and Google Analytics (acquired from Urchin) in 2005 alone, acquired FeedBurner in 2007 and released Google Chrome this year – and that’s just a handful of the products they’ve acquired or released in recent years.

Here’s the thing: Google by and large doesn’t charge for these products. 99% of Google revenue last year came from advertising. That came out to $16,412,643.

So why spend company resources developing free web applications for the masses?

Is Google benevolent?

Considering the wealth of resources available from Google that require little more than registering for a free user account, the impression of Google might be that of a benevolent corporation that creates useful tools and gives them to us, asking nothing in return. If that sounds a bit too rosy a picture, it’s because it should.

If Google is benevolent, it is only a side effect of an intelligent profit-driven strategy.

Keep these points in mind:

1. Google is maintaining and building a brand. They want to ultimately be the “go to” company for advertising placement in virtually every medium. They’ve got their fingers in just about every advertising pie as it is, and they know that market share is directly related to brand awareness and “trust.” Putting out great free stuff gets people to love and trust Google. When given a choice, people will always stick with a brand they love and/or trust.
2. Google is collecting, storing and using your information. They don’t ask you for it, because they no longer need to. In agreeing to their terms when you signed up for your Google Account you’ve already given them permission. They don’t ask you where you like to shop, where you hang out, who your friends are, what your taste in clothing is and what your favorite YouTube videos are because they already know. Simply by tracking a user’s behavior in search engines, in email and on websites, Google knows a lot more than we think they do about our personal traits and situations.

I’m mainly interested in discussing point 2 since point 1 is pretty self-explanatory. I don’t mean to suggest that we should be fearful of Google’s data collection practices (conspiracy theory was never my thing), but we need to be aware of this.  It is actionable information.

The bottom line we should be drawing from this: Google has tons of usage data, and, since they earn ~$16.5 billion in revenue from advertising as their core business, it stands to reason they’re using this data to improve their products.

How does search fit in?

According to comScore research, of an approximate 10 billions searches per month (across all engines), Google served 55.2% of all queries, or 184,000,000 searches per day. Search is still huge for Google. It is widely held, though not publicly confirmed, that Google’s AdWords paid search listing program is still their main source of revenue.

Search still matters to Google – perhaps more than anything.  In his letter to Google shareholders published in their 2007 Annual Report (PDF), co-founder Larry Page noted that 1/3 of Google employees were focused on search.

Since Google revolutionized search and brought it to the mainstream there has been value in top rankings.  Search engine optimization (SEO) followed this value, rising from an obscure niche 10 years ago to a massive, multi-billion dollar industry today.  It’s all been built on the ability of SEO experts and firms to push a site to the top of the Google rankings for competitive keywords.

Along the way there have been clashes.  Google’s goal of keeping users loyal to their search engine relies on a positive user experience – they’ve got to answer people’s queries with relevant results.  The goal of an SEO firm is to get their client’s site to the top, whether or not they deserve to be there or provide the “best answer” to a given keyword.  There’s a natural disconnect there.

So far Google has taken the following key steps (among others) to improve quality and make it harder to artificially influence their search engine rankings. They:

1. Originally changed the search game by using a link-based algorithm to rank websites (earlier search engines used on-page content and Meta tags almost exclusively, allowing webmasters to stuff keywords into their pages and rank for them)
2. Relieved free-for-all link directories of their ability to pass PageRank to listed websites (thereby devaluing those links)
3. Cracked down on paid links where they were detectable

Google doesn’t make these steps public in most cases – and why would they? Their interest is improving the product and increasing market share, not publicly sharing proprietary information on their algorithm. As a result, we don’t know all of the changes that have taken place. There are reportedly more than 200 variables in Google’s algorithm. There aren’t many people inside Google, let alone outside, who are privy to this information.

In fact, because there are few clues at best as to what changes Google will make to their algorithm, we generally don’t know about changes until they’re rolled out and the results change. With that in mind it’s clear that changes have been made that we still don’t know about because, essentially, we don’t know the absolute rules of the environment and therefor have a tough time detecting it when they’re altered.

Is user data already being incorporated?

Jordan Kasteler of Search & Social wrote recently about the “future” of search engine optimization (SEO) pointing to personalized search and user behavior data as central influences in the coming changes to SEO as we know it. Jordan is quite right that this data will be factor in the future. I would go a step further and suggest that Google already uses this data to determine search rankings. Why wouldn’t they?

Take the Google Analtyics benchmarking feature, for example. This illustrates the fact that Google has data on how your site stacks up against other sites in the same vertical in terms of traffic and user behavior. If they can look at users’ interaction with your website and reasonably assume a correlation to user satisfaction, wouldn’t skewing their search results in favor of the sites users seem to like using the most make sense?

What does this mean for SEOs and Webmasters?

Essentially, it means that Google is winning the battle against what they perceive as spam (which is basically any website or page that diminishes the user experience). Indeed, since Google controls the playing field this is a battle they were sure to win from the beginning in only a matter of time.

The way to win the Google ranking battle today and in the future is to align your interests with Google’s. That means creating remarkable and memorable user experiences on your website. It means avoiding (detectable) deceptive practices wherever possible. Overall, it means creating stuff that people love and making it easy for them to stick around and talk about it.  That isn’t always easy, but getting it done is crucial for your website and business as a whole.

It’s unlikely that Google will eliminate all loopholes in their ranking algorithm in the future. Man’s invention will always have its flaws. I don’t believe we’ll ever see a true end to “black hat” SEO tactics – practices that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines but go undetected or otherwise unchecked. There will always be those who are clever enough to make a living in the fringes. But by the nature of the SEO industry, as soon as enough people catch on and the fringe goes mainstream, the game is up.

For the majority of us, we’re going to be better off focusing our energy on creating content and tools that people love, turning visitors into fans and giving them megaphones to spread the word.