Google on how it ranks search results and prevents obvious spam

Don’t focus on one or two specific signals, make your site overall better says Google.

Google released a new audio episode in which John Mueller, Gary Illyes, Martin Splitt, and Duy Nguyen. A member of the Google search quality team, discussed how the business combats search result spam and rank search results.

The latest episode is available to download or listen to on YouTube.

How Google ranks search results

Listening to a Google representative explain how Google search works are always fascinating. Gary Illyes of Google delves further into how Google ranks its search results in this latest episode.

The short version is that Google generates a shortlist of results for a particular query, say around 1,000. That list is produced depending on whether the query and the material on the page are both relevant and timely. Following the generation of the list, Google applies several of its ranking signals and criteria to the shortened list. That’s where “the magic” happens, according to Gary Illyes.

According to Gary Illyes, these documents are given scores or numbers, and Google “assigns a number. Which we calculate using the signals that we collected during indexing plus the other signals.” What you see in the results is effectively a reverse order based on those numbers that we assigned,” he explained. RankBrain and even the HTTPS boost are instances of algorithms employed. But the HTTPS boost is only used as a tie-breaker and does not significantly reorganize the search results, according to him.

This section of the audio discussion began around 28 minutes into the session. When you have the opportunity, I strongly advise you to listen to it.

Google spam prevention and machine learning

Duy Nguyen of Google’s search quality team spoke about spam prevention methods before Google spoke about how it ranks search results. One thing he said that struck me as very interesting was that Google utilizes machine learning models to combat the most blatant spam. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but it’s wonderful to see Google confirm it.

According to Google’s Duy Nguyen, the company uses a “highly powerful and comprehensive machine-learning algorithm. That basically got rid of the majority of the blatant spam. According to him, this machine learning approach allows the Google search quality team to focus on “other vital work.” More essential work may be done in the areas of hacked spam, online frauds, and other challenges that machine learning algorithms miss.

Google’s machine learning models have a lot of data that they use to improve their spam protection and search. And it appears that Google is highly confident in its abilities.

Why we care

As I previously stated, listening to Google representatives discuss search is always fascinating. The way they talk about search could provide us some insight into what really counts when it comes to rankings. As Google’s Duy Nguyen stated, it’s disappointing to see SEOs focusing on a single metric. Frequently external metrics that Google doesn’t even use. instead of concentrating on improving your users’ functionality, quality content, and overall user experience. Because Google has hundreds of ranking signals, focusing on just one or two is unlikely to help you rank well in Google Search.

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