Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine - New York Times

Here is an article that everyone interested in search engine optimization should read and think about. I took away from this several thoughts about how to improve my own optimization, which I will point out below, but you should read and think about this article from the perspective of your own practices and experiences to see what you can glean from it.

"Recently, a search for “French Revolution” returned too many sites about the recent French presidential election campaign — in which candidates opined on various policy revolutions — rather than the ouster of King Louis XVI. A search-engine tweak gave more weight to pages with phrases like “French Revolution” rather than pages that simply had both words."

This description leads me to believe that the specificity with which we place keyword phrases on our pages will become more important in ranking. We talk about this every time we cover use of keyword phrases in our clinic, but this tweak seems to make those lessons more important! It also emphasizes the importance of finding those "low ranking" or little used phrases to include in the site, because this tweak can cause them to float right to the top on any particular search.

"... Google’s formulas were not giving enough importance to links from other sites about Palo Alto."

This seems to say that links will become more important, particularly links that are related to your site from what we refer to as a "neighborhood" on the web. One indication of a neighborhood relationship is that a number of sites all link to similar sites. This is one of the things that we know Google takes into account when looking fr relationships between sites. It seems that it may be more important in the future.

"... Google has preferred pages old enough to attract others to link to them."

This point tells us that we have some special opportunities whenever something on our site is related to current news. If there is a surge in searches for a topic that is related to something on your site, it may be much more important that you have some fresh content pertaining to that topic. In other words, you can't rely on having been prescient and having information already on your site. Google looks like it will add emphasis to sites that have new content relating to the topic!

"Once Google corrals its myriad signals, it feeds them into formulas it calls classifiers that try to infer useful information about the type of search, in order to send the user to the most helpful pages."

I am not sure what to make of this comment except that what Google is doing with its algorithm is very complex and fluid, meaning that making the optimal use of techniques requires continual updating!