Forget about discovering a “magic formula” that will win a high ranking for every search on your appropriate keywords, said Jennifer Laycock, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Guide. To determine which Web pages are most relevant to their users, Google, Yahoo! and the other engines use math formulas called “algorithms.” And in the past, SEM consultants used rules of thumb they said helped marketers’ pages parlay those algorithms into high rankings.
The problem is that search engines are aware of those tactics and tweak their ranking system to minimize the effect of these gambits, making their methods of evaluating relevance more closely resemble human thought processes.
For example, in the early days of search marketing, engines judged that a page was significant if it simply had a lot of links. When everyone started adding links to their pages, the engines got savvier and looked at the text in those links, to see what was actually said and how relevant those linked pages were. Marketers caught on to that tactic too, so Google and the others began looking at the quality of the links, on the theory that a link from some unknown Geocities page was not as authoritative as one from The Wall Street Journal.
Now search engines are factoring in a link’s age to decide if a site deserves a high ranking. Sites that have been up and amassing high-quality links for five years count more than those that only sprang up two months ago. Other tactics that may apply in the future include watching user behavior after they’ve clicked on a result or a paid search ad; if the user clicks back right away, the content may get downgraded in relevance.
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