Weekly SEO news: 21 September 2010
Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

Last week, Google's Eric Schmidt said that listing Google's 200 ranking factors would reveal business secrets. Although Google does not officially publish their ranking algorithms, there is something that you can do to crack Google's secret algorithm.

In the news: the latest search engine statistics, Google adds new features to the search results, Cuil.com is down and more.

Table of contents:

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Best regards,
Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO

1. An insight into Google's 200 ranking factors

Last week, Google's Eric Schmidt said that listing Google's 200 ranking factors would reveal business secrets. Although Google does not officially publish their ranking algorithms, there is something that you can do to crack Google's secret algorithm.

Google algorithm cracked

Google's 200 ranking factors

Google uses about 200 ranking factors to determine the position of a web page in the search results. Unfortunately, Google does not reveal the list of ranking factors and how exactly they are weighted.

Google's ranking formula is a business secret. The problem is that your web pages must have all of these 200 elements if you want to see your pages on Google's first result page.

Which factors are important to Google?

In the past, Google revealed some factors that influence the position of a web page in Google's search results:

  • the presence of a search term in the HTML title tag
  • the presence of a search term in the HTML body copy
  • search terms in bold typeface
  • search terms in header tags
  • the presence of a search term in anchor text in links to a page
  • the PageRank of a page (the actual PageRank, not the toolbar PageRank)
  • the PageRank of the entire domain
  • the speed of the web site

These eight factors are only some of the 200 factors that Google uses to rank a website. It does not make sense to add your search terms to every element on your website. It's also important that the frequency of the search term in the web page elements is correct.

If a search term appears in every possible element on a page, it is likely that Google will penalize the page because it is over-optimized.

How to crack Google's secret ranking algorithm

The web pages that are listed on Google's first result page for your search terms obviously have all the ranking elements that are needed to get a top 10 position on Google for that search term.

If you want to be listed for the same search term, it makes sense to analyze the top ranked pages.

In which page elements do they use the search term? How many links do the top ranked pages have? How many of these links contain the search term? How often should you use the search term in the different web page elements and the links?

Analyzing the top 10 pages will help you to greatly improve the rankings of your own web pages for your search terms.

The easiest way to analyze the top 10 ranked pages and your own web pages is to use IBP's Top 10 Optimizer. IBP's Top 10 Optimizer analyzes all elements of the top 10 ranked pages and it compares the results to your own web page. It will tell you how to change your own pages so that they will be listed on Google's first result page.

The search engine optimization method that is used by IBP's Top 10 Optimizer works so well that we can offer a 'top 10 rankings or money back' guarantee. If you don't get top 10 rankings for the keywords of your choice after using IBP, you'll get your money back.

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2. Search engine news and articles of the week

StatisticsThe latest search engine statistics

"Nearly 15.7 billion explicit core searches were conducted in August. Google Sites ranked first with 10.3 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites in second with 2.7 billion (up 3 percent) and Microsoft Sites in third with 1.7 billion (up 2 percent). Ask Network accounted for 598 million explicit core searches (up 2 percent) followed by AOL LLC Network with 366 million. [...]

Google Sites accounted for 60.5 percent of total core search queries conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 21.0 percent and Microsoft Sites with 12.8 percent. Ask Network captured 3.5 percent of total search queries, followed by AOL LLC with 2.2 percent."



Bing overtakes Yahoo! as the #2 U.S. search engine

"For the first time, MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search overtook Yahoo! as the #2 search engine in the U.S. with a 13.9% share of search volume in August 2010, a 0.25% delta increase from the previous month. Although Google saw little change in its month-over-month search volume, it still dominates the search market, accounting for 65% of all U.S. searches. [...]

In terms of a year-over-year comparison, Google has seen little change in its share of search while Yahoo! has seen a small but steady decline, going from a 16.0% share to 13.1% (a delta drop of 2.9% or a relative drop of 18%). MSN/Windows Live/Bing’s share has grown from 10.7% in August 2009 to 13.9%."



Cuil Cuil goes down, and we hear it's down for good

"Cuil, the much maligned search engine that at one time had hopes of toppling Google, has gone offline. And from what we hear from former employees, it’s not just a temporary outage, it may be done for good. [...]

The company had raised $33 million in venture capital in 2007 and 2008."



Google adds several smaller features to the search results

"Here are some of our recent updates: Director and cast links in movie search results, new results for TV episodes [...]

This week we extended the [stars in search] feature to local results, so now you can star places and get to them later—through a search, on Google Maps or on your phone. For example, if you're planning a trip to Tucson, you might want to go to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum—so you would star the result from your desktop computer."



New details about Google Instant search

"Instant has Google's improved triggering for realtime queries and that could tie directly into their 'Social Layer' scheduled for release in Q4 2010. You'll find Google Squared technology in Instant results for queries like [inventor of airplane].

You may notice, the scroll to search feature actually pushes results down the page and the footer search box is no more. It's possible that Google Instant's GUI emphasizes images, video and highly positioned AdWords ads (colored background) more, because they flash in and out of view in certain cases."



Search engine newslets

  • Yahoo's internal three year plan: 1 billion users and $10 billion in revenue.
  • Instant Search: Google's biggest ever mistake?
  • Google Instant – AdWords display differences.
  • Video Sitemaps: Is your video part of a gallery?
  • Themed ads in Google Custom Search.
  • Yahoo Search fall preview.
  • Multimedia search on Yandex.com.
  • Is Google a monopolist? A debate.

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3. Success stories

"The overall saving on marketing costs has been remarkable."

"Some time ago, I found myself the owner or a number of timeshares which I was unable to use and decided to rent out.

This raised the question of how to market them and a website offered the best solution providing I could get the SEO right.

The IBP SEO software ensured search ranking status for the websites www.canalbarge.co.uk and www.narrowboat-holidays.org.uk within a few months, sufficient so that since then I have been able to rent out my own timeshares every year, plus 25 to 30 for other people as well on an annual basis.

The overall saving on marketing costs has been remarkable."
Ron Meriman, www.canalbarge.co.uk



Tell us how IBP helped your business and 250,000 readers will see YOUR website

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

Click here to tell us your story.



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