So how are rankings determined? Traditionally, search engines heavily relied on
how often the word in query appeared on web pages in the index. Now, calculations
are very complex. According to Google, its
search results are automatically calculated with 'more than 100 factors' and
with its PageRank algorithm, which determines the importance of a page by taking
into account the number of hyperlinks to the page and the content of those associated
sites. Currently, all major search engines including Google, MSN Search and Yahoo!
take the inbound link very seriously.
Google gives us another important clue. Its hypertext-matching
analysis determines how accurately the page represents what it describes. That's
because some web publishers flooded their sites with irrelevant keywords before.
Now, Google says that its hypertext-matching
method 'analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions
and the precise location of each word.' They say it also analyzes neighboring
pages to see the relevance of the page content to a search query.
Finally, the three major search engines give us guidelines.
Google: Google Information
for Webmasters
MSN Search: Guidelines
for successful indexing
Yahoo!: Yahoo!
Search Technology Content Quality Guidelines
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