If you are a Fortune 500 company owner or a small mom and pop with a website, chances are you can benefit from Google’s new interactive infographic on How Search Works. The infographic starts at the beginning of the search process and details how Google crawls and indexes the over 30 trillion individual pages that are contained on the web. For someone trying to understand how the algorithms work and get a better idea of how search engine optimization improves your rankings, this is a good place to start. It is also a good place to send the reluctant boss who does not understand why SEO costs what it does.
3-Part Intro
The first three sections of How Search Works- The Story dive into the details of Crawling and Indexing, Algorithms, and Fighting Spam. The Fighting Spam section is really cool because it actually shows live spam screenshots of websites that Google has taken action against. For SEOs or marketing departments that need to justify the importance of quality, original content this can be a great resource to showcase what happens when your site exists only to game the system. These spam sites, according to Google, “Appear to use aggressive spam techniques such as automatically generated gibberish, cloaking and scraping content from other websites.”
Spam Notifications
Below you can see a screenshot of the spam notifications from Google to website owners over time. Google says that they fight spam 24/7 to keep your results relevant. While spam websites may not be your biggest competition it is important to recognize that it is evident. Spam removal is automatic and sites that are found to scrape content will have the hand of Google cast down upon them.
Reconsideration Requests
To Google’s credit, they do try hard to give web owners a chance to redeem themselves. The below chart shows websites owners that were notified of being spammy and were proactive about contacting Google and requesting reconsideration so that they can again appear in the search results.
Other Cool Stuff
Within the Inside Search section (the main section where How Search Works is located) also lays interesting features that Google shares. The Tips & Tricks section gives some thoughts on how Google can help your life. In terms of SEO you can use this section to try and formulate your own answers to Google queries that are related to your company’s products or services. There is also a cool page on Google’s Knowledge Graph – a feature that gives answers about real world people, places or things in addition to some other stuff that is self-promoting but still useful.
This is a true value-add for regular Joe’s, SEOs, and marketing or business managers. Learning more about Google’s features is a win-win for everyone and allows your business to tap into more things that your consumers may also be interested in.
To learn more about SEO or other tools to help grow your business online, contact Success Agency today.
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