A new patent application from Google tells us about how the search engine may use context to find query suggestions before a searcher has completed typing in a full query. Think of Google as a Decision Engine, focused upon bringing searchers more information about interests they may have. After seeing this patent, I’ve been thinking about previous patents I’ve seen from Google that have similarities.
To those of us who are used to doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO), we’ve been looking at URLs filled with content, and links between that content, and how algorithms such as PageRank (based upon links pointed between pages) and information retrieval scores based upon the relevance of that content have been determining how well pages rank in search results in response to queries entered into search boxes by searchers. Web pages connected by links have been seen as information points connected by nodes. This was the first generation of SEO.
Chances are good that many of the methods that we have been using to do SEO will remain the same as new features appear in search, such as knowledge panels, rich results, featured snippets, structured snippets, search by photography, and expanded schema covering many more industries and features then it does at present.
My last Post was Five Years of Google Ranking Signals, and I start that post by saying that there are other posts about ranking signals that have some issues. But, there are other pages that you may want to look at while you are learning to rank webpages, and I didn’t want to turn people away from looking at one recent post that did contain a lot of useful information.
Cyrus Shepard recently published a post about Google Sucess Factors on Zyppy.com which I would recommend that you also check out.
Cyrus did a video with Ross Hudgins on Seige Media where he talked about those Ranking signals with Cyrus, called Google Ranking Factors with Cyrus Shepard. I’m keeping this post short on purpose, to make the discussion about ranking the focus of this post, and the star. There is some really good information in the Video and in the post from Cyrus. Cyrus takes a different approach on writing about ranking signals from what I wrote, but it’s worth the time visiting and listening and watching.