How Google Analyzes and Ranks Content

Any business with a digital presence (i.e. nearly all modern businesses) knows that it wants to rank high on Google. But what exactly does that mean?

The underlying process behind Google’s content analysis and ranking system is fairly well-known. It’s complex, yes, and made up of hundreds of small indicators that Google’s search algorithm takes into account. But it’s discernible, to the point where a systematic process can be created to cover a large amount of digital ground.

At Leadflask, it’s our job to make sure our clients are doing those hundreds of things well, and monitoring to assess for gaps in SEO (search engine optimization) efforts. Step one in that process is understanding how Google operates.

Crawling

Google is constantly scanning the web for new websites and web pages on those sites. Google’s search robots will visit and “crawl” pages to read them.

You can speed up this process by submitting URLs to Google for your site, via Google Search Console (you’ll need to set up Search Console for your site first).

Over time these search robots can also learn how often you tend to update your site with new or updated content. Sites that publish numerous pieces of content per day are being visited by search crawlers multiple times per day, whereas a static website that hasn’t been updated in years might receive a new crawl every few weeks or even months.

If you’re proactive about publishing content, you generally won’t have to worry about submitting URLs to Google, which will find the new URL quickly regardless.

If you don’t want a crawler to read a page, metadata can be inserted in a page’s code preventing a crawl. This is rare, but has uses in organizing and prioritizing pages you’d like Google to consider.

Indexing

Crawling just means that Google is aware of a page’s existence. It won’t be able to show up in search results until it is indexed.

Similarly to crawling, there is metadata that can be added to a page indicating that you don’t want search robots to crawl a page. While this will prevent it from ranking on Google, it may be useful for sensitive information or pages that aren’t indicative of your business’s core services.

Search Console is again a good tool to confirm that a page is indexable.

For clarity, there are other reasons Google might choose not to index a page. Being able to be indexed isn’t enough. This could be due to a variety of reasons, including poor site design, lack of security features, or another piece of content on your site that is a better representative for a particular ranking.

Ranking

An article on how to rank highly on Google could take up a novel. We’ve written about SEO and search rankings elsewhere, but it’s worth revisiting the basics of how Google evaluates content.

Google will prioritize the content that it believes is of the highest quality for a particular search topic. What this means can vary, since it’s looking at search intent. For example, a product search (e.g. “Mazda dealerships near me”) might indicate an intent to purchase, whereas a more general query (e.g. “Mazda safety ratings”) could indicate more of a research-based inquiry, well before the searcher is ready to make a purchase.

The results will - or at least should - conform to the intent as Google understands it. Within those results, it’s monitoring for the highest quality content. It gauges this through a variety of factors that we discuss below.

SERPs and Non-Traditional Search Rankings

As an aside, it’s important to note that traditional webpage content isn’t the only type of information being cataloged and indexed by Google.

Google describes this as their Knowledge Graph. These can include individual facts and listings for information or items that aren’t found online. It’s what often allows Google to answer your question without sending you to another website, or to point you to an offline resource such as a museum or library.

Business listings, individual product pages, images, videos and more can all also be indexed and ranked. Depending on the inquiry, these could appear alongside or even above traditional rankings.

Collectively, these are referred to as SERPs, or Search Engine Results Pages. This is any result for a Google search, not simply traditional web links.

Optimizing for SERPs can be a valid strategy as well, so it’s important to know how your customers are searching for you to identify which results you should prioritize.

How Google Prioritizes Content

It’s common to think of Google rankings as an impossibly complex series of equations, but this is misleading. The general qualities Google looks for in content are relatively straightforward. While it’s true that there are a lot of ways it looks at each of these features, the overall properties that it prioritizes often amount to common sense.

Meaning - Meaning relates directly to the search intent. What are you looking for with a search and how well does a page match that intent? This is how Google often knows when you’ve misspelled a word, or when you’re looking for a specific movie but can’t remember the name. It has learned this through billions of searches and adjustments to its results.
Relevance - Relevance relates to how closely (or not) your content relates to a search query. This is where keywords are important, those words or phrases that indicate a page’s intent. They aren’t the only indicator of relevance, but they are among the strongest.
Quality - If you’re searching for “breeds of cats” you don’t simply want a page that has the word “cats” spammed over and over again. Quality delves into a lot of different indicators, but Google tests and monitors pages to figure out which have the most useful information for visitors.
Usability - Is your site optimized for mobile use? Is it accessible to those with certain disabilities? Is the design clean and coherent? Does it load quickly? These and more all relate to usability, and they are technical indicators that suggest your page is going to be easy to use.
Context - If you type “coffee near me” you’re not going to get results that are across the country from you. Geographic location matters for many searches, just as it doesn’t matter for many others. Google will take into account your location, past searches, and whether or not you’ve permitted certain search results in your account settings.

Prioritizing content isn’t just one thing. It’s not just about where you live, or just about the quality of the page you’re visiting. These factors are weighed differently depending on the intent, context and specific search situation.

Thus, each person can conceivably get a slightly different experience with Google search based on these factors.

This is good news, because it means that if you’re creating content that’s ideal for your target audience, they’re going to be more likely to find it since you’re taking into account things like context and search intent.

Ranking for SERPs

Ranking for SERPs isn’t a single strategy. Instead, it depends again on the search type and the SERPs in question.

For example, many SEO experts have begun to recommend including FAQ-style sections in their content that answer questions that appear in the “People Also Asked…” dropdown section of many Google queries.

If you have product listings and want them to show up for shopping results, you’ll want

Strategies for each type are beyond the scope of this article. However, the overarching point is that identifying key SERPs for your business and researching strategies to rank for them can pay dividends on leads, customers and revenue.

Spam and Negative Ranking Indicators

The opposite side of the Google algorithm coin is what they penalize content for. This is sometimes collectively known as spam.

Keyword stuffing (like our cat example above) is an old form of this. You don’t see it much anymore, because Google learned to consistently crack down on it decades ago.

In more recent years, content-stuffing (a term I just invented right now) is similar, wherein a business spams its site with low-quality AI-generated content to try to brute force its way into ranking for a particular search term.

Google has had to crack down on this as well, and these are just two of the many spammy practices out there, often referred to as black-hat SEO tactics.

Additionally, Google has a team that will manually search for spam and either block it in their system and/or use it to recommend changes to the algorithm that will prevent the tactic’s use altogether.

This is also why Google releases regular updates to its algorithm and tests search functionality across a wide range of variables. They want to inform web developers and content creators of what is considered spam and what is rewarded within its system.

The end goal is to incentivize quality content for users. The system doesn’t always work perfectly, but it’s able to self-correct over time and account for changes in technology that introduce new forms of spam.

Google Ranks and Your Business

Sometimes I lament that we as content marketers have to devote entire topic clusters to Google. Should any single company be this dominant in regard to search algorithms, and how it dictates our best practices?

The reality for me though, as well as for many others like me, is that as long as Google is the biggest search game in town, we have to know how to play that game.

The good news is that Google wants content that is good for the user. You should too, because it reflects well on your business and will get you more customers.

My slightly spicier take (opinion alert!) is that there are certain writing practices that Google seems to incentivize that stifle the amount of creativity digital creators can display in their work, and that the ubiquity of AI content is only hastening this trend.

This is a small nitpick though, in an environment where - regardless of the dominant technology players - businesses need to adapt to consumer preferences and technological trends. To do anything less is to fail.

If you enjoyed this article and want to delve more deeply into SEO tactics and strategies for your digital content, take a look at the articles below:

And when you’re ready to create a roadmap for your own content and want experts to help you every step of the way, let’s talk and see how Leadflask can help your business thrive!