Google's human reviewers: real people judge about your Google rankings

Google's human reviewers: real people judge about your Google rankings

Most people think that Google purely ranks websites by using mathematical formulas. Google even has an official statement about the way that search results are calculated: "A site's ranking in Google's search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query. Sometimes subtleties of language cause anomalies to appear that cannot be predicted." Not everything is done by software robots at Google If you read the above quotation carefully, you'll see that Google relies "heavily" but not fully on computer algorithms. In a recent interview, Google's Engineering director Scott Huffman explained that a lot of human reviewers (probably 10,000) manually review Google's results: "Every day, we are looking at a random sample of grades that we think represent the queries we get from users. Evaluators look at the quality of each result relative to those queries." Real people take a look at Google's search results and they tell Google which websites they don't like. If your website looks spammy, it might be reported to Google by these people. Google's algorithm is constantly changing Google constantly updates its algorithm based on the feedback of the human reviewers: "The evaluation site ratings that we gather never directly affect the search results that we return. We never go back and say, 'Oh, we learned from a rater that this result isn’t as good as that one, so let's put them in a different order.' Doing something like that would skew the whole evaluation by-and-large. So we never touch it." That means that a website won't be automatically removed from the search results if a human reviewer finds it inappropriate (unless it is an obvious spam page). It does mean that Google's algorithm is constantly changing and that you have to keep your website up-to-date with Google's latest algorithm. You have to keep an eye on your website rankings A website that has high rankings on Google today might lose these rankings tomorrow based on Google's ever-changing ranking algorithm. As a rule of thumb, websites with many inbound links and good content that is related to the searched keyword will remain much longer in Google's search results than websites that obtained their high rankings through tricks. If you use spammy SEO methods, you can quickly get high rankings on search engines. Unfortunately, Google will completely remove your website from the search results as soon as they find out that you use these methods: Spammy websites can be detected by Google's human reviewers and your competitors can report your spam website to Google. If you use ethical SEO methods, it will take longer until you get high search engine rankings. However, your rankings will grow steadily and you'll get a much better performance in the long run: Do not use spammy SEO methods to increase your rankings on Google. It will backfire on you. If you want to get lasting rankings on Google, you have to keep an eye on Google's changing algorithm. You should check your website regularly to find out if it is compliant to Google's current algorithm. If you create a website that is compliant to Google's algorithm and only use ethical SEO methods then your website will get page one rankings on Google and it will keep these rankings as long as possible.

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Bing about web spam - Is your website considered spam?

The official Bing blog recently had a post about web spam. According to Bing's definition, web spam is "unwanted web content that uses overtly manipulative techniques in an effort to fraudulently attain undeservingly high ranking in search engines."

Why is web spam a problem?

Search engines want to return relevant websites on their result pages. If a web spam page is listed in the search results, it will lead the search engine user to a web page that is not related to the query.

How does Bing classify web spam?

Bing classifies spam based on two types of signals: page-level and link-level:

Page-level spam is comprised of shady search engine optimization techniques that are used on-page. On-page spamming techniques include hidden text, keyword stuffing, doorway pages and cloaking.

Link-level spam uses fraudulent linking strategies to improve the rankings of a website in the search engines. For example, this can be done by joining automated link exchange networks or by setting up many domains with automatically generated pages for the sole purpose of linking to each other.

For a page to be labeled as web spam by Bing, at least one of these techniques must be in use.

Does Bing penalize web pages with web spam?

The Bing engineers actively work to detect web spam. When thy find a website that uses spammy optimization techniques, they will penalize that website:

"We penalize those sites with actions commensurate with the egregiousness of their offenses, ranging from rank neutralization (intentionally lowering their organic page rank) to permanent expulsion from the index."

What does this mean for your website?

Although this blog post was written by Bing engineers, it is very likely that Google uses similar (if not more strict) methods to find web spam. If you don't want to risk the position of your website in the search results, you should only use ethical search engine optimization methods.

If you use spammy SEO methods, you might get high rankings on search engines quickly. Unfortunately, search engines usually detect all spamming methods sooner or later and they will completely remove your website from the search results as soon as they find out that you use these methods:

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Official Google statements about ranking factors

Matt Cutts also indicated that if you link from one page to a duplicate page, you can mess up your PageRank. Google also tries to pass the PageRank and other link signals from the duplicate pages to the original page.

If you use the rel=canonical tag on your web pages then the pages needn't be exact duplicates but they should be conceptual duplicates of the same product, or things that are closely related.

"It's totally fine for a page to link to itself with rel=canonical, and it's also totally fine, at least with Google, to have rel=canonical on every page on your site."

However, Google does not always obey the canonical tag:

"The crawling and indexing team wants to reserve the ultimate right to determine if the site owner is accidentally shooting themselves in the foot and not listen to the rel=canonical tag."

4. Affiliate pages don't get high rankings

If a website is an affiliate website that is very similar to other pages (only with a different logo, etc.) then this page won't get high rankings.

If Google detects an affiliate link than this link won't pass any PageRank power.

5. Redirects work but they don't pass the whole PageRank

If you change your domain name and redirect old pages with a 301 redirect from your old page to your new page then the link power will be passed to your new domain name but the overall power of the links will decrease. 301 redirects do not pass the full PageRank.

6. Low quality pages can cause problems

"If there are a large number of pages that we consider low value, then we might not crawl quite as many pages from that site, but that is independent of rel=canonical."

If you have a lot of web pages with thin content then Google might stop crawling your website. Matt Cutts also suggested that it might help to be wordy:

"You really want to have most of your pages have actual products with lots of text on them."

7. PageRank sculpting and website navigation

Google does not want you to sculpt your website for PageRank reasons. The best way to pass link power from one page to other pages is to have a good website navigation.

"Site architecture, how you make links and structure appear on a page in a way to get the most people to the products that you want them to see, is really a better way to approach it then trying to do individual sculpting of PageRank on links."

"You can distribute that PageRank very carefully between related products, and use related links straight to your product pages rather than into your navigation. I think there are ways to do that without necessarily going towards trying to sculpt PageRank."

8. You still shouldn't use JavaScript links for your website navigation

"For a while, we were scanning within JavaScript, and we were looking for links. Google has gotten smarter about JavaScript and can execute some JavaScript.

I wouldn't say that we execute all JavaScript, so there are some conditions in which we don’t execute JavaScript.

We do have the ability to execute a large fraction of JavaScript when we need or want to. One thing to bear in mind if you are advertising via JavaScript is that you can use NoFollow on JavaScript links."

9. Google does not like paid links

Matt Cutts said they Google doesn't want advertisements to affect search engine rankings.

They might put out a call for people to report more about link spam in the coming months. Matt Cutts said that Google "does a lot of stuff" to try to detect ads and make sure that they don't unduly affect search engines.

If you want to get high rankings on Google, you should use search engine optimization methods that lead to lasting results. Don't try to cheat Google.

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