Official Google Blog: Introduction to Google Search Quality
I’ve been a little involved with the Search Engine Optimiztion (SEO) industry lately. Many have heard of and ‘know about’ PageRank and think ‘it is is’ in terms of being displayed high in the Google search results pages. It is not, and the post above begins to unwrap the way Google (and other search engine companies) work to ensure we get the results we want… At least that’s what they claim is their goal, and the only goal. Hm. I actually believe they’re sincere in this. Only I (and every other searcher out there) need to understand what are ‘results’ and what is paid advertising on the results pages. Different actors vary in thel lavel of clarity here. Plus, and that’s the raison d’etre for this post, we need to understand and manage settings for language, domain and more as illustrated by the quote below:
The most famous part of our ranking algorithm is PageRank, an algorithm developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded Google. PageRank is still in use today, but it is now a part of a much larger system. Other parts include language models (the ability to handle phrases, synonyms, diacritics, spelling mistakes, and so on), query models (it's not just the language, it's how people use it today), time models (some queries are best answered with a 30-minutes old page, and some are better answered with a page that stood the test of time), and personalized models (not all people want the same thing).It IS important weather you use google.se or google.com. Timing is also important. Some sites are valued (by google!) because of their freshness, others because they've been around for a long long time.
PageRank is important, but it is only a small part of why a certain site is important and valued by google at different points in time, for diffenent search contexts.
