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+ How Search Engines Look at Links

A special report from the Search Engine Strategies 2002 Conference, March 4-5, Boston, MA.

Representatives of Google, Fast, and Ask Jeeves/Teoma shared inside information about page ranking and linking analysis at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Boston, March 4th.

The panel, featuring Ask Jeeves Vice President of Search Paul Gardi, FAST Software Engineering Manager Rolf Michelsen, and Google's Director of Technology Craig Silverstein, offered candid views on how their search engines evaluate web sites to determine relevancy and ranking.

Craig Silverstein said Google from the outset wanted to use a more human process to determine if a site had value related to particular keyword phrases. Looking at meta data, he said "We began developing a mathematical way to determine if others think your site has value."

Google evaluates the number of incoming and outgoing links to a site, the circular associations of linking around the Web and data related to communities of Web sites, trying to identify local areas with unique themes in common.

According to Silverstein, it's relatively easy to get good ranking in Google. "If you make it easier for us we like you," he said. He stressed that you should be associated with reputable sites, making sure those sites have keywords related to yours. It's also crucial to use targeted keywords throughout your site, and have relevant explanatory text around your keywords and links.

Paul Gardi from Teoma/AskJeeves said, "We begin with text analysis." Next, Teoma considers "general popularity," comparing sites, for example, with one link coming in vs. a site with three links coming in.

Gardi stressed that link popularity alone wasn't enough. "Spamming techniques can create problems so we also look at status," he said. What is status? Higher status sites have a number of quality sites linking to them. You want these high-status sites linking to you.
 
"Using Direct Hit [Ask.com's now defunct search engine], we add click popularity to help us form Local Subject Communities," said Gardi. This means that Teoma evaluates a whole community of sites to see if there are common themes that unite them and if there are "authority sites" in that mix. Teoma is constantly "...looking at members of the community to see who they have chosen as authorities," said Gardi.

For good ranking, he added that you need to make sure there are some strong "authority" sites in your community of links, sites within a common thematic mix, and sites with a significant number of links in to them.

Rolf Michelson from FAST (which powers Lycos Search in addition to its own AllTheWeb.com search engine), said FAST first looks at the network of linking within a site and for a consistent theme. He described the process of link evaluation as looking for "content ranking" or "content classification." FAST is "...forming a bubble, a statistical structure..." within which they can evaluate the kind of company you are keeping.

Ask/Teoma's Gardi summed up the session for all participants, suggesting that for best results, you should optimize all pages, don't mix with bad company, and make sure link text says something important.

AllTheWeb/FAST
http://www.alltheweb.com

Google
http://www.google.com

Teoma
http://www.teoma.com

Terry Plank is co-owner of the Academy of Web Specialists and Director of Marketing. A search engine marketing professional since 1996, he is also co-owner of a local ISP in the San Francisco Bay Area.