Search Engine Ranking is Not Just Relevancy Anymore

Posted by JohnCarcutt
December 29, 2005

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Practically since the inception of search engines, a pages ranking was determined buy how close the topic of a page matched the search term used, ie: Relevancy. Through the years this system worked fine and made the most sense. Today, the search engines are in an ever growing struggle to provide more relevant and quality results to users more complicated search queries. The difficulty of this task is compounded by the armies of search engine spammers (people knowingly spamming or not). So ranking a page based solely on the pages relevancy to the search phrase is not enough anymore.

Please don’t get me wrong, relevancy is still a huge part of the ranking algorithms. However, to combat the spammers and provide even higher quality search results, engines are starting to look harder at other factors to determine which sites should be placed at the top of the rankings. They are looking at “Page Quality” now combined with Relevancy.

“Page Quality” as a concept is a measurement of how well a page can represent the relevant content searched for by the surfer. This can encompass a variety of measurable benchmarks. Some probable indicators off the top of my head could include; code validation, text to code ratio, quantity and type of ads, page layout and the amount of content. As with relevancy issues relating to search algorithms, no one knows the exact factors which determine a pages “Page Quality” (PQ).

This has actually been going on for a while now in one form or another. Googles’ Page Rank (PR) system was an early shot at developing process to determine the quality of a page. It worked well for a while and propelled Google towards its current 500 lb Gorilla status. Then the Google Toolbar indicated a specific ranking of pages. The search spammers jumped on the PR band wagon and took a perfectly viable system and corrupted it beyond usefulness. Today PR is no more important than other basic SEO techniques. The importance of PQ is growing.

Need a concrete example? I found one over at Google’s AdWords of all places. AdWords has long used a two part system to rank ads in a results page. First part is how high the bid is for a specific term. This counts for 50% of the placement. The second was CTR or click-thru-ratio which was also worth 50% of the ranking score. CTR is a measurement of how many times an ad is clicked compared to how many times it was shown. 10% CTR means every 10 out of 100 visitors clicked on the ad.

Well in the past couple of months the CTR factor of the equation has been replaced with a factor called “Quality Score”. This includes a number of items related to the Quality of the ads landing page. Now if the worlds largest and most popular search engine can analyze a page to determine its quality from within is advertising system, wouldn’t common sense tell us they can and would do the same to their primary product; Search Results. My opinion is yes they do and will continue to increase its importance. The great thing about this, it when you work towards PQ, you are building a better website and most likely a web site which sells better. It’s a win–win situation.

Moving forward, relevancy will continue to become only part of the puzzle. New conditions will arise and when all is said and done “Page Quality” will be a primary concern. So when formulating your SEO Plans, keep this in mind and shorten those meeting room arguments on relevancy related topics. Start a few new ones on “Page Quality”.