Search Engine Optimization on Google

Google's sweeping changes confirm the search giant has launched a full out assault against artificial link inflation
and declared war against search engine sp@m in a continuing effort to provide the best search service in the world...
and if you thought you cracked the Google Code and had Google all figured out - guess again.

Google has raised the bar against search engine sp@m and artificial link inflation to unrivaled heights with the
filing of a United States Patent Application 20050071741 on March 31, 2005.

The filing unquestionably provides SEO's with valuable insight into Google's tightly guarded search intelligence and
confirms that Google's information retrieval is based on historical data.

What exactly do these changes mean to you? Your credibility and reputation on-line are going under the Googlescope!
Google has defined their patent abstract as follows:

A system identifies a document and obtains one or more types of history data associated with the document. The system
may generate a score for the document based, at least in part, on the one or more types of history data.

Google's patent specification reveals a significant amount of information both old and new about the possible ways
Google can (and likely does) use your web page updates to determine the ranking of your site in the SERPs.

Unfortunately, the patent filing does not prioritize or conclusively confirm any specific method one way or the
other.

Here's How Google Scores Your Web Pages

In addition to evaluating and scoring web page content, the ranking of web pages are admittedly still influenced by
the frequency of page or site updates. What's new and interesting is what Google takes into account in determining
the freshness of a web page.

For example, if a stale page continues to procure incoming links, it will still be considered fresh, even if the
page header (Last-Modified: tells when the file was most recently modified) hasn't changed and the content is not
updated or 'stale'.

According to their patent filing Google records and scores the following web page changes to determine freshness.

• The frequency of all web page changes.
  
• The actual amount of the change itself... whether it is a substantial change, redundant or superfluous.
  
• Changes in keyword distribution or density.
  
• The actual number of new web pages that link to a web page
  
• The change or update of anchor text (the text that is used to link to a web page).
  
• The numbers of new links to low trust web sites (for example, a domain may be considered low trust for having
  too many affiliate links on one web page).
  

Although there is no specific number of links indicated in the patent it might be advisable to limit affiliate
links on new web pages. Caution should also be used in linking to pages with multiple affiliate links.

Developing Your Web Page Augments for Page Freshness

I'm not suggesting that it's always beneficial or advisable to change the content of your web pages regularly, but it is very important to keep your pages fresh regularly and that may not necessarily mean a content change.

Google states that decayed or stale results might be desirable for information that doesn't necessarily need updating, while fresh content is good for results that require it.

How do you unravel that statement and differentiate between the two types of content?

An excellent example of this methodology is the roller coaster ride seasonal results might experience in Google's SERPs based on the actual season of the year.

A page related to winter clothing may rank higher in the winter than the summer... and the geographical area the end user is searching from will likely be considered and factored into the search results.

Likewise, specific vacation destinations might rank higher in the SERPs in certain geographic regions during specific seasons of the year. Google can monitor and score pages by recording click-through rate changes by season.

Google is no stranger to fighting sp@m and is taking serious new measures to crack down on offenders like nevër before. <

Section 0128 of Google's patent filing claims that you shouldn't change the focus of multiple pages at once.

Here's a quote from their rationale:

"A significant change over time in the set of topics associated with a document may indicate that the document
has changed owners and previous document indicators, such as score, anchor text, etc., are no longer reliable.

Similarly, a spike in the number of topics could indicate sp@m. For example, if a particular document is associated
with a set of one or more topics over what may be considered a 'stable' period of time and then a (sudden) spike
occurs in the number of topics associated with the document, this may be an indication that the document has been
taken over as a 'doorway' document.

Another indication may include the sudden disappearance of the original topics associated with the document. If
one or more of these situations are detected, then [Google] may reduce the relative score of such documents and/or
the links, anchor text, or other data associated the document."

Highlight from an article by Lawrence Deon for SEO NEWS