Links from older, authoritative, sites have become essential for good rankings in the Google search engine results.

Google recently updated its search engine result listings algorithm, meaning that while some web pages climbed up the ladder, others dropped into oblivion. Google, of course, keeps its algorithm secret, but search engine marketing experts nevertheless do their best to learn from their own experience. Google may still make adjustments to the new algorithm based on feedback and analysis of the quality of the new search engine results. The following are changes that may give you a clue as to what you should and should not do in order to gain higher rankings:

• Google has improved their spam filter, and is now better at catching sites that use hidden text (also by using CSS files), take part in mini-nets and similar link schemes.

• The longer a site has been indexed, the better the overall ranking.

• Authority rules even more than before, meaning that sites of well known household brands rank higher, mainly because of a larger number of incoming links.

• Incoming links remains one of the most important factors for Google rankings. However, since more and more webmasters are using unsavory techniques to generate incoming links, Google is punishing any link structures that taste of pure manipulation.

This applies for instance to link-building schemes, interlinking between closed networks of sites, too many links from scraping sites (i.e. automatically built web pages with content taken from web directories or stolen from other sites) etc. The winners are pages with links from well-known and trusted web sites. Moreover, these web sites should preferably be of relevance to the content of your own site. Obviously it takes time to get such links, meaning that patience has become the most important virtue in search engine marketing. It can take more than a year before you can hope to increase the number of authoritative links.  

Google's New Algorithm Mystery

For about 1 month we all are seeing dramatic changes in our Google rankings, Link popularity and all. Page rank of websites seems to be changing hourly. If it is 5 now it can be 2 an hour later. Pages seem to go from a first page ranking to a spot on the 100th page.

Webmasters, especially SEOs are really concerned about this change and this can be seen in various Forums.

Google algorithm changes started in November 2003 with the Florida update, which now ranks as a legendary event in the Webmaster community. Then came updates named Austin, Brandy, Bourbon, and Jagger. Now we are dealing with the BigDaddy! As per SEO news "The algorithm problems seem to fall into 4 categories. There are canonical issues, duplicate content issues, the Sandbox, and supplemental page issues."

Canonical Issues

These occur when a search engine treats www.yourdomain.com, yourdomain.com, and yourdomain.com/index.html all as different websites. When Google does this, it then flags the different copies as duplicate content and penalizes them.

The Sandbox

This has become one of the legends of the search engine world. It appears that websites, or links to them, are "sandboxed" for a period before they are given full rank in the index, kind of like a maturing time.

Duplicate Content Issues

These have become a major issue on the Internet. Because web pages drive search engine rankings, black hat SEOs (search engine optimizers) started duplicating entire sites' content under their own domain name, thereby instantly producing a ton of web pages (an example of this would be to download an Encyclopedia onto your website). As a result of this abuse, Google aggressively attacked duplicate content abusers with their algorithm updates.

Supplemental Page Issues

Webmasters fondly refer to this as Supplemental Hell. This issue has been reported on places like WebmasterWorld for over a year, but a major shake up around February 23rd has led to a huge outcry from the Webmaster community. This recent shakeup was part of the ongoing BigDaddy rollout that should finish this month. This issue is still unclear, but here is what we know. Google has 2 indexes: the Main index that you get when you search, and the Supplemental index that contains pages that are old, no longer active, have received errors, etc. The Supplemental index is a type of graveyard where web pages go when they are no longer deemed active. No one disputes the need for a Supplemental index. The problem, though, is that active, recent, and clean pages have been showing up in the Supplemental index. Like a dungeon, once they go in, they rarely come out. This issue has been reported with a low noise level for over a year, but the recent February upset has led to a lot of discussion around it. There is not a lot we know about this issue, and no one can seem to find a common cause leading to it.

Google updates were once fairly predictable, with monthly updates that Webmasters anticipated with both joy and angst. Google followed a well published algorithm that gave each website a Page Rank, which is a number given to each webpage based on the number and rank of other web pages pointing to it. When someone searches on a term, all of the web pages deemed relevant are then ordered by their Page Rank.

Google uses a number of factors such as keyword density, page titles, meta tags, and header tags to determine which pages are relevant. This original algorithm favored incoming links and the anchor text of them. The more links you got with an anchor text, the better you ranked for that keyword. As Google gained the bulk of internet searches in the early part of the decade, ranking well in their engine became highly coveted. Add to this the release of Google's Adsense program, and it became very lucrative. If a website could rank high for a popular keyword, they could run Google ads under Adsense and split the revenue with Google!