Why is the Google Algorithm So Important?

of those things. It's one of those words that you sort of know what it means. I know, it's a mathematical something or other that makes something happened in a certain way. And uh, okay, so I looked it up. I admit I looked it up, and it says that when I looked at Webster's that basically an algorithm is a pattern for doing this. So this is the pattern that Google is using to rank search results on It's

on its page, right. Yes, this is a set of instructions, in this case, a computer algorithm, a set of instructions that tells the computer exactly how to bring back search engine results pages Those are also known as serups in the s EO BIZ and that would be Search engine optimization UM, an acronym and exciting topic guess the world

of acronyms. According to Search Engines UH, with the Google algorithm, basically, what they're doing is they're trying to make sure that users who are using the Google Search engine are getting the best results for any particular search terms they're putting in. So any time you go to Google and you insert a certain keyword or phrase UM, ideally the first few results that pop up should be the ones that are most pertinent to your search, and you shouldn't have to

dig deeper and deeper in. Now that's kind of important because there's over a hundred and fifty million active web pages on the Internet, so you don't want to have to search through all of those manually, you know. I think it's fascinating that you know, in reading your article that Google has been able to weed out, you know, tricks that might try that people might try to push the site up on the page. Like, for example, if we wanted you to read why is the Google algorithm

so important? Why we don't you know, type into the web page somewhere Google algorithm, Google algorithm, Google algorithm fifty times. That's actually gonna push it down the page. And uh, and you know it's it's interesting to note that it's it's dependent on who links to you to your page and how old your site is. So these are all in the instruction set, right, Yes, this algorithm includes all

of these factors. Um. In the past, search engines would mainly look for certain keywords in a page, which maybe you've come across a web page where at the very very bottom, if you scroll all the way down, you see this block of text and it's just random words all thrown together. That's just to get search engine hits for any of these terms. So it's pretty much any word that webmaster could think of, right well, that that doesn't guarantee a good search results experience. So yes, Google

guards against that. They really look at the content of the site. Um. And as you say, they look at the links that are coming. That are the websites that are linking to the website in question. Um. So the more websites that linked to that that particular page, the higher that page will rank in Google search results. And interestingly, if those those sites that are linking to the page are themselves very important pages. Then that also boosts the

particular web pages ranking and Google. Um, that's where the mystery comes in. We know that that the algorithm uh does these things. We just don't know how much Google waits one criterion against another. Uh. We had some readers ask us about this. They said, well, if if the

Google algorithm is patented, how can it be a secret. Well, the patent tells us that Google ranks pages based upon these links, but it doesn't tell us how they determine which links are more important than others, not not specifically. So that's where the mystery comes in. That you know, that's just amazing that they're they're able to do that,

and then they can tweak it on the fly. Um, because you were telling me about an article that you had seen, right, Yes, there's an article in a popular mechanics. They interviewed a Google executive and he admitted that in two thousand seven, Google tweaked their algorithm four hundred fifty times. I mean, that's it's amazing to know that they could do that. I know I've used the word amazing a lot of times, amazing number of times to Google it.

I'm sure it would come right up, probably would accept. I've used it so many times you would push it right. It's true. Um, but yeah, it's it's um. Just fascinating that they're able to change it that frequently. Uh. Still and still, you know, receive a normal amount of traffic and handle the load without any problems and still remain the trusted search source simply because you know the way that they're they're processing this information from all the people.

In fact, I would say that that's why they're such a trusted search source. It's because they're constantly tweaking to make sure you get the best search results for any particular search. Well. To read more about that, you can visit why is the Google Algorithms So Important? Which is up today at how stuff works dot com. Thanks for more on this and thousands of other topics because that how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast set how stuff works dot com