As SEO professionals, we usually concentrate on the question “How can I rate my page?”
But the more important question we have to ask is: “How do search engines rate pages?”
Why search engines rank web pages
Before we dive into how search engines rank web pages, let's stop a bit and think about why they rank them.
After all, it would be cheaper and easier for them to simply display the pages randomly, by word count, by freshness, or by any of a variety of simple sorting systems.
The reason they do not do this is obvious - you would not use it.
Therefore, when we ask a question about ratings, we should always remember that the user we are trying to satisfy is not ours, he belongs to the search engine, but the search engine lends it to us.
If we incorrectly use this user, it will undermine the search engine's reputation, and, therefore, its advertising revenue will decrease.
An example of such a scenario can be seen on a commercial site.
If the site sells any product or service, it is based on the seller’s specific experience, and he believes that they will be useful to visitors. If the seller finds out that this offer is not interesting to visitors, the product is removed from the site or “hidden” until better times.
This is what search engines do.
But how?
These are just 5 steps.
We are simply talking about a basic process that must go through each request in order to start your life as an information request and complete it as a set of 10 blue links hidden under a sea of advertising.
Understand this process and for whom it is intended, and you will think about how to rank your pages.
Step 1: Classify
The first step in this process is the classification of the incoming request. Query classification gives the mechanism the information necessary to perform all the following steps.
This may be a classification by geography, gender, age, etc.
Step 2: Context
The second step in the ranking process is to set the context.
The search engine should take into account any relevant information about the user entering the request.
We see examples of this regularly. For example, here:
The search engine uses queries entered earlier, the location of the IP address, etc. etc., to give the most relevant response to the request, even such a simple and not informative, as the "weather".
Here are some examples of information collected by the search engine:
• Location
• Time
• Is the request a question?
• The device used to query
• The format used for the request
• Does the request relate to previous requests?
• Have they seen this query before?
Step 3: Importance
Before the engine can determine which pages should be ranked, it must first determine which signals are most important.
For a query like "civil war", being in the USA, we get a result that looks like this:
Hard result. But what happens if the freshness of the news has played an important role? As a result, we get a result similar to:
Thus, given the type of request and the selected context elements, the engine can now rely on its understanding of which of their signals is the most important.
Step 4: Search Page Layout
You can see this in the example of the civil war above. For different requests, the layout of the search results page changes.
The mechanisms will determine which possible formats are applied to the target of the request, the user making the request, and the resources available.
In the context of this part, it is important to understand that the various elements of any page of search results must be identified quickly.
This means that when the request is completed and the first three steps are completed, the mechanism will refer to a database of various possible items to insert into the page, possible placements, and then determine which of them will apply to a particular request.
For general queries, it is much more likely that the engines store a database, the elements of which they have already calculated, in order to meet the user's likely intentions and not to process them every time.
Now the search engine knows the classification of the request, the context in which the information is requested, the importance of the signal and the layout, most likely corresponding to the various possible intentions for the request.
Finally, it's time for a rating.
Step 5: Ranking
Interestingly, this is probably the easiest step of the process.
Website ranking is easy. The search engine puts all of the above together.
You may ask, how can understanding this help you in your SEO efforts?
It is like understanding the basic functions of your computer. We cannot manufacture a processor, but if we know which characteristics make it faster and how cooling affects it, we can get a faster computer that needs to be updated much less often.
The same goes for SEO.
If you understand the essence of the engine, you will understand its place in this mechanism.
Futureinapps company is engaged in SEO website promotion for businesses.
