The Meta Description Tag is a part of HTML code that allows you to give a short and concise summary of your web page content. The words placed in this Meta Tag, are often used in the search engines result pages (SERP), just below the Title Tag as a brief description of your page. In the Search Engine Results Pages, after reading the Title, a user usually studies the description of the page and decides whether she/he wants to visit your site or not.
Some Search Engines prefer to ignore your Meta Description Tag and build the description summary on the basis of the search term for the SERP on the fly. They usually pick up parts of the text on your page wherever the search terms appear. The only exceptions are the Flash, Frame or All Image sites that have no content, and some high importance websites, where the search term is not found in the text. In such a case, Google picks up your entire Meta Description Tag and displays it.
Importance of Meta Description Tag
All search engines do not give very high prominence to the Meta Description Tag and may generate a description on the fly while listing your web page in SERP. However, in some search engines, a good Meta Description Tag might help a page to rank higher for your targeted search terms. This holds true for Flash, Frame or All Image sites that have no content as well as some high importance websites, where the search term is not found in the text. In such cases, some search engines pick up the exact Meta Description Tag and display it in its SERP, just below the Title Tag. Hence, it is important to write a crisp and enticing Meta Description Tag that includes your important keyword phrases and manages to interest your user, thus making her click on your entry.
Keyword Phrases and Meta Description Tag
Include your most relevant and important keyword phrases in your page's Meta Description Tag. As in the case of Title Tag, focus on the same keyword phrases as you used in your page's Title Tag and body text. Fewer and highly targeted search phrases can boost your web page's relevance in the search engines results. Hence, stress should be on writing a brief yet informative description for your web page.
The Meta Description Tag of your web page should not read like a collection of a keywords, but should be written as an informative and interesting summary of your web page.
Dos and Don'ts of a good Meta Description Tag
1. Excessive keyword repetition should be avoided. Instead, pay attention to the sequence in which your keywords appear. Your most important terms should be placed in the beginning.
2. Make sure each page on your web site has a different and a unique Meta Description Tag using the keyword phrases that are relevant to that web page.
3. A Meta Description Tag of 25-30 words should do fine.
4. The most important keyword phrases should, ideally be placed at the beginning of your Meta Description Tag, which increases your chances of better Search Engine Rankings.
1
In a nutshell, the basic ingredients of a good Description Tag
1. Write it in sentence structure.
2. Should be relevant to the similar 25-30 word (under 150 characters) description of the first text within the visible page.
3. Do not repeat your keywords more than 3 times in description tag. If you need, make alternatives (e.g. ‘prescription’ and ‘prescriptions’ can be used 3 times each).
4. Minimize the use of “stop words” such as “and, the, of”.
5. Keyword phrases that appear earliest in the Meta description will generally receive higher ranking value.
6. Try to include this tag in all pages by describing the content and it should be unique.
7. Don’t load your description with only keywords.
8. Strive for 5-10% keyword density.
9. Use different Meta description tag for each page.
Other Do's and Don'ts
1. Consider using both singular and plural forms of the important words in your Title Tag. For instance, you may use both ‘loan’ and ‘loans’ while making the Title Tag. Google is still experimenting with Stemming (interchange of singular and plural terms); however, it is fluctuating in its deployment frequently. A word of Caution: Do not overdo it.
2. Title Tag length: Google usually reads about 90 characters of your Title Tag. Therefore, a Title Tag of about 80-90 characters are good enough.
3. Do not use keywords repeatedly as the density of your keywords does not matter in your Title Tag.
4. The sequence in which keywords appear in your Title Tag is important. Try using natural phrases for your Title Tag, which read better and will likely conform to your Keyword Phrases.
5. Avoid using the same Title Tag throughout your site. Try using a unique Title Tag for each web page and use keyword Phrases that holds theme relevance to that page. You also get to leverage more keyword phrases if you individualize the Title Tag in all pages.
6. Most search engines are not case sensitive; therefore, you can write your Title Tag in a way that looks most visually appealing.
7. Title Tag should ideally read like a phrase that makes some grammatical sense, not just a collection of keywords. This is all the more important as the Title Tag usually appears as the text when you 'bookmark' or add a page to your 'favorites' list. Therefore, it should make sense when a person reads it later. For instance, if you want to include the keywords Home Loans, fast clearance, No credit check in your Title Tag, you can write a Title Tag that reads:
Home Loans: fast clearance with no credit check.
In a nutshell, the basic ingredients of a good Title Tag
1. It should always appear immediately after the opening tag
2. It should be specific keywords and phrases.
3. Use only keywords and phrases that are in the body text on your page.
4. May use the same keyword twice to attain reasonable keyword density, but be sure that you don’t put the same word right next to each other or more than twice.
5. 5-12 words (less than 60 characters) are a good length for title tag.
6. Consider using both singular and plural forms of the keywords.
7. It should be read like a phrase that makes some grammatical and logical sense, not collection of keywords.
8. Try to place your primary keywords at the starting of the tag.
9. Keep the words in title case (e.g. Profession Marketing Tips)
10. Make sure to avoid using search engine stop words or words like Home, Default, Internet or Index.
11. Avoid using superlatives in your title (e. g. the best, fastest, cheapest, leader)
12. Try to minimize the use of commas in this tag.
13. Strive for a keyword density of 25-30% for each keyword.
14. Always remember to close this tag
15. All pages must have a unique and descriptive keyword phrase in the title.
16. Try to keep title tags as unique as possible in each page in your website.
17. Do not change the title tag regularly.
1. Consider using both singular and plural forms of the important words in your Title Tag. For instance, you may use both ‘loan’ and ‘loans’ while making the Title Tag. Google is still experimenting with Stemming (interchange of singular and plural terms); however, it is fluctuating in its deployment frequently. A word of Caution: Do not overdo it.
2. Title Tag length: Google usually reads about 90 characters of your Title Tag. Therefore, a Title Tag of about 80-90 characters are good enough.
3. Do not use keywords repeatedly as the density of your keywords does not matter in your Title Tag.
4. The sequence in which keywords appear in your Title Tag is important. Try using natural phrases for your Title Tag, which read better and will likely conform to your Keyword Phrases.
5. Avoid using the same Title Tag throughout your site. Try using a unique Title Tag for each web page and use keyword Phrases that holds theme relevance to that page. You also get to leverage more keyword phrases if you individualize the Title Tag in all pages.
6. Most search engines are not case sensitive; therefore, you can write your Title Tag in a way that looks most visually appealing.
7. Title Tag should ideally read like a phrase that makes some grammatical sense, not just a collection of keywords. This is all the more important as the Title Tag usually appears as the text when you 'bookmark' or add a page to your 'favorites' list. Therefore, it should make sense when a person reads it later. For instance, if you want to include the keywords Home Loans, fast clearance, No credit check in your Title Tag, you can write a Title Tag that reads:
Home Loans: fast clearance with no credit check.
In a nutshell, the basic ingredients of a good Title Tag
1. It should always appear immediately after the opening tag
2. It should be specific keywords and phrases.
3. Use only keywords and phrases that are in the body text on your page.
4. May use the same keyword twice to attain reasonable keyword density, but be sure that you don’t put the same word right next to each other or more than twice.
5. 5-12 words (less than 60 characters) are a good length for title tag.
6. Consider using both singular and plural forms of the keywords.
7. It should be read like a phrase that makes some grammatical and logical sense, not collection of keywords.
8. Try to place your primary keywords at the starting of the tag.
9. Keep the words in title case (e.g. Profession Marketing Tips)
10. Make sure to avoid using search engine stop words or words like Home, Default, Internet or Index.
11. Avoid using superlatives in your title (e. g. the best, fastest, cheapest, leader)
12. Try to minimize the use of commas in this tag.
13. Strive for a keyword density of 25-30% for each keyword.
14. Always remember to close this tag
15. All pages must have a unique and descriptive keyword phrase in the title.
16. Try to keep title tags as unique as possible in each page in your website.
17. Do not change the title tag regularly.
The HTML title tag isn't really a meta tag, but it's worth discussing in relation to Search Engine Optimization.
But what about search engines! The title tag is crucial for them. The text you use in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page. In addition, all major crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your listings.
Every HTML (web page) should have a Title tag and all tags should be unique. Don’t use the same title tag for multiple documents. It should be inserted into the header of your web page and looks like this:
The title tag belongs in the Head section of your source code, and is generally followed by your Meta description and Meta keywords tags. The order of these tags is not critical, so don't worry if your HTML editor places them in a different position.
Why is the Title Tag Important from Search Engine Optimization perspective?
Title Tag is an important Tag amongst other SEO related options, as it not only communicates the theme of your web page to the human visitors but is also considered very important by the Search Engine crawlers. Title Tag is not a Meta Tag, but nevertheless it is the most important of all Tags. Almost all crawler based search engines use the Title Tag to gather information about your web site. The search engines use the words or the content of the Title Tag during the ranking process to analyze the relevance of your web page. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, AOL, AltaVista, and AlltheWeb use your web page's Title Tag to evaluate its relevance.
Title Tag is the hyperlinked text title that is displayed in the search engine results page (SERP). The users, in turn, click on this hyperlink to go to your web site.
The Title Tag is also used as the text when you ‘bookmark’ a page or add a certain web page to your ‘favorites’ list in your browser.
A carefully constructed Title Tag is very important for your page's ranking with the search engines.
Working with the Title Tag
Since the Title Tag plays a vital role in determining your site's ranking in the SERP, you need to pay a lot of attention to the words that appear in the Title Tag and the order in which they appear. You need to develop a crisply worded Title Tag that includes your most relevant keyword phrases and performs the function of announcing the summary of your web page's content.
Title Tag and Keywords
Amongst all the places you can use your important keyword phrases; the usage of keywords in the Title Tag gives the highest weight.
While using your keyword phrases in the Title Tag, it is important to be highly focused. You should use the same keywords not just in your Title Tag, but also in your page content and the Meta Description Tag of your web page. If the keywords you intend using in your Title Tag do not appear anywhere else in your
page's content, then avoid using them in your page title as the weight of the keywords in the Title Tag gets diluted.
It is essential to sequence your keyword phrases correctly in your Title Tag. The order in which they appear is of great importance. Having your most important keyword phrase towards the beginning of the Title Tag helps display your title in bold in the SERP (search engines result pages).
What to Include in your Title Tag?
You could put the product or service you are offering in the Title Tag, instead of your firm or company name. This is because most users when searching for, information search for specific products or services, not company names. Also note that search engines read about 80-90 characters in your Title Tag. This is prime Real Estate for your important keywords. If you strongly feel like putting your company or domain name in your Title Tag, then, do so at the end. Wasting several characters by inserting your site name does you little good.
But what about search engines! The title tag is crucial for them. The text you use in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page. In addition, all major crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your listings.
Every HTML (web page) should have a Title tag and all tags should be unique. Don’t use the same title tag for multiple documents. It should be inserted into the header of your web page and looks like this:
The title tag belongs in the Head section of your source code, and is generally followed by your Meta description and Meta keywords tags. The order of these tags is not critical, so don't worry if your HTML editor places them in a different position.
Why is the Title Tag Important from Search Engine Optimization perspective?
Title Tag is an important Tag amongst other SEO related options, as it not only communicates the theme of your web page to the human visitors but is also considered very important by the Search Engine crawlers. Title Tag is not a Meta Tag, but nevertheless it is the most important of all Tags. Almost all crawler based search engines use the Title Tag to gather information about your web site. The search engines use the words or the content of the Title Tag during the ranking process to analyze the relevance of your web page. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, AOL, AltaVista, and AlltheWeb use your web page's Title Tag to evaluate its relevance.
Title Tag is the hyperlinked text title that is displayed in the search engine results page (SERP). The users, in turn, click on this hyperlink to go to your web site.
The Title Tag is also used as the text when you ‘bookmark’ a page or add a certain web page to your ‘favorites’ list in your browser.
A carefully constructed Title Tag is very important for your page's ranking with the search engines.
Working with the Title Tag
Since the Title Tag plays a vital role in determining your site's ranking in the SERP, you need to pay a lot of attention to the words that appear in the Title Tag and the order in which they appear. You need to develop a crisply worded Title Tag that includes your most relevant keyword phrases and performs the function of announcing the summary of your web page's content.
Title Tag and Keywords
Amongst all the places you can use your important keyword phrases; the usage of keywords in the Title Tag gives the highest weight.
While using your keyword phrases in the Title Tag, it is important to be highly focused. You should use the same keywords not just in your Title Tag, but also in your page content and the Meta Description Tag of your web page. If the keywords you intend using in your Title Tag do not appear anywhere else in your
page's content, then avoid using them in your page title as the weight of the keywords in the Title Tag gets diluted.
It is essential to sequence your keyword phrases correctly in your Title Tag. The order in which they appear is of great importance. Having your most important keyword phrase towards the beginning of the Title Tag helps display your title in bold in the SERP (search engines result pages).
What to Include in your Title Tag?
You could put the product or service you are offering in the Title Tag, instead of your firm or company name. This is because most users when searching for, information search for specific products or services, not company names. Also note that search engines read about 80-90 characters in your Title Tag. This is prime Real Estate for your important keywords. If you strongly feel like putting your company or domain name in your Title Tag, then, do so at the end. Wasting several characters by inserting your site name does you little good.
What is meta tag?
A meta tag is a special HTML tag that provides information about a Web page. Unlike normal HTML tags, meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed. Instead, they provide information such as who created the page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the page's content. Many search engines use this information when building their indices.
How to use HTML Meta Tags
What are Meta tags? They are information inserted into the “head” area of your web pages. Information in the head area of your web pages is not seen by those viewing your pages in browsers. Instead, Meta
Information in this area is used to communicate information that a human visitor may not be concerned with. Meta tags, for example, can tell a browser what “character set” to use or whether a web page has self-rated itself in terms of adult content.
Let's see two common types of meta tags, then we'll discuss exactly how they are used in more depth.
In the example above, you can see the beginning of the page’s “head” area as noted by the HEAD tag -- it ends at the portion shown as /HEAD.
Meta tags go in between the “opening” and “closing” HEAD tags. Shown in the example is a TITLE tag, then a META DESCRIPTION tag, then a META KEYWORDS tag. Let's talk about what these do.
A meta tag is a special HTML tag that provides information about a Web page. Unlike normal HTML tags, meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed. Instead, they provide information such as who created the page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the page's content. Many search engines use this information when building their indices.
How to use HTML Meta Tags
What are Meta tags? They are information inserted into the “head” area of your web pages. Information in the head area of your web pages is not seen by those viewing your pages in browsers. Instead, Meta
Information in this area is used to communicate information that a human visitor may not be concerned with. Meta tags, for example, can tell a browser what “character set” to use or whether a web page has self-rated itself in terms of adult content.
Let's see two common types of meta tags, then we'll discuss exactly how they are used in more depth.
In the example above, you can see the beginning of the page’s “head” area as noted by the HEAD tag -- it ends at the portion shown as /HEAD.
Meta tags go in between the “opening” and “closing” HEAD tags. Shown in the example is a TITLE tag, then a META DESCRIPTION tag, then a META KEYWORDS tag. Let's talk about what these do.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is the art and science of making web pages attractive to the search engines.
Why Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.
So search engine optimization focuses on techniques such as making sure that each web page has appropriate title tags and meta tags, and that the keyword or key phrases for the page are distributed throughout the content in a way that the particular search engine will like.
Benefits of Search Engine Optimization
Search engines generate nearly 90% of Internet traffic and are responsible for 55% of e-commerce transactions. Search Engine Promotion has shown to deliver the highest ROI, compared to any other type of marketing, both online and offline. Search engines bring motivated buyers to you and hence contribute to increased sales conversions.
Search Engine Optimization offers an affordable entry point for marketing your website and an effective way to promote your business online. SEO makes for a long-term solution, is your access to sustained free traffic and a source of building brand name and company reputation.
5. Basic Rules of Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is crucial for anyone who wants people to visit his or her Web site. You can place as many ads as you like, but most people are still going to find your site because of its listings in search engines or directories.
It's a fact that most people who use search engines only look at the first one or two page of search listings. The goal of effective search engine optimization is to get your pages listed on those critical first pages for particular key terms.
1) Remember that each page of your site is a separate entity.
You need to apply the basics of effective search engine optimization to each individual page.
2) Choose appropriate key words or phrases for each page.
Phrasing matters. Many more people search for the term “effective search engine optimization” than for “effectively optimizing for search engines”. To find out which key words or phrases are more popular than others, you can use a tool such as Overture's and Word tracker’s Search Term Suggestion Tool
3) Give each page an appropriate title that includes the key word or phrase at least once.
We often see sites that use the name of their business as the title of all their pages. Is every page of their site about their business? Probably. But chances are really low that people will be searching for their business’ name!
4) Put the key words or phrase that you've chosen in the page's title tag, meta keywords, and meta description.
Make sure that the meta description is as appealing as possible, because some search engines actually use this description in the search engine results pages that people will be reading.
5) Be sure your chosen key words or phrase is repeated judiciously throughout the content of the page.
You don't want to overdo it, or your page may be rejected as spam, but you need to repeat it enough times that the search engine's software will consider the phrase relevant.
Following are the main areas of web page that search engines give more importance in their ranking algorithms:
Title tag, The main body text, Meta tags, Link popularity, Domain name, Heading tags, Proximity of Keywords, Bold or Italic texts, Folder or file names, Image alt tags, Title attribute and keyword in the beginning of the sentence.
Based on the importance, we can rank those areas as below:
Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is the art and science of making web pages attractive to the search engines.
Why Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.
So search engine optimization focuses on techniques such as making sure that each web page has appropriate title tags and meta tags, and that the keyword or key phrases for the page are distributed throughout the content in a way that the particular search engine will like.
Benefits of Search Engine Optimization
Search engines generate nearly 90% of Internet traffic and are responsible for 55% of e-commerce transactions. Search Engine Promotion has shown to deliver the highest ROI, compared to any other type of marketing, both online and offline. Search engines bring motivated buyers to you and hence contribute to increased sales conversions.
Search Engine Optimization offers an affordable entry point for marketing your website and an effective way to promote your business online. SEO makes for a long-term solution, is your access to sustained free traffic and a source of building brand name and company reputation.
5. Basic Rules of Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is crucial for anyone who wants people to visit his or her Web site. You can place as many ads as you like, but most people are still going to find your site because of its listings in search engines or directories.
It's a fact that most people who use search engines only look at the first one or two page of search listings. The goal of effective search engine optimization is to get your pages listed on those critical first pages for particular key terms.
1) Remember that each page of your site is a separate entity.
You need to apply the basics of effective search engine optimization to each individual page.
2) Choose appropriate key words or phrases for each page.
Phrasing matters. Many more people search for the term “effective search engine optimization” than for “effectively optimizing for search engines”. To find out which key words or phrases are more popular than others, you can use a tool such as Overture's and Word tracker’s Search Term Suggestion Tool
3) Give each page an appropriate title that includes the key word or phrase at least once.
We often see sites that use the name of their business as the title of all their pages. Is every page of their site about their business? Probably. But chances are really low that people will be searching for their business’ name!
4) Put the key words or phrase that you've chosen in the page's title tag, meta keywords, and meta description.
Make sure that the meta description is as appealing as possible, because some search engines actually use this description in the search engine results pages that people will be reading.
5) Be sure your chosen key words or phrase is repeated judiciously throughout the content of the page.
You don't want to overdo it, or your page may be rejected as spam, but you need to repeat it enough times that the search engine's software will consider the phrase relevant.
Following are the main areas of web page that search engines give more importance in their ranking algorithms:
Title tag, The main body text, Meta tags, Link popularity, Domain name, Heading tags, Proximity of Keywords, Bold or Italic texts, Folder or file names, Image alt tags, Title attribute and keyword in the beginning of the sentence.
Based on the importance, we can rank those areas as below:
Title
2.0
Link popularity
2.0
The main body text
1.5
Domain name
1.0
Keyword prominence
1.0
Heading tags
0.5
Proximity of keywords
0.5
Bold or Italic
0.4
Folder or file name
0.3
Meta description
0.3
Alt tag
0.2
Title attribute
0.2
Meta keywords
0.1
Total Score
10
2.0
Link popularity
2.0
The main body text
1.5
Domain name
1.0
Keyword prominence
1.0
Heading tags
0.5
Proximity of keywords
0.5
Bold or Italic
0.4
Folder or file name
0.3
Meta description
0.3
Alt tag
0.2
Title attribute
0.2
Meta keywords
0.1
Total Score
10
What is Google?
“Googol” is the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, “Mathematics and the Imagination” by Kasner and James Newman. Google's play on the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web.
Google Technology
Google.com began as an academic search engine. In the paper that describes how the system was built, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page give an example of how quickly their spiders can work. They built their initial system to use multiple spiders, usually three at one time. Each spider could keep about 300 connections to Web pages open at a time. At its peak performance, using four spiders, their system could crawl over 100 pages per second, generating around 600 kilobytes of data each second.
Google runs on a distributed network of thousands of low-cost computers and can therefore carry out fast parallel processing. Parallel processing is a method of computation in which many calculations can be performed simultaneously, significantly speeding up data processing. Google has three distinct parts:
* Googlebot, a web crawler that finds and fetches web pages.
* The indexer that sorts every word on every page and stores the resulting index of words in a huge database.
* The query processor, which compares your search query to the index and recommends the documents that it considers most relevant.
Let's take a closer look at each part.
Googlebot, Google's web Crawler
Googlebot is Google's web crawling robot, which finds and retrieves pages on the web and hands them off to the Google indexer. It's easy to imagine Googlebot as a little spider scurrying across the strands of cyberspace, but in reality Googlebot doesn't traverse the web at all. It functions much like your web browser, by sending a request to a web server for a web page, downloading the entire page, and then handing it off to Google's indexer.
Googlebot consists of many computers requesting and fetching pages much more quickly than you can with your web browser. In fact, Googlebot can request thousands of different pages simultaneously. To avoid overwhelming web servers, or crowding out requests from human users, Googlebot deliberately makes requests of each individual web server more slowly than it's capable of doing.
Googlebot finds pages in two ways: through an add URL form, www.google.com/addurl.html, and through finding links by crawling the web.
allows rapid access to documents that contain user query terms.
To improve search performance, Google ignores (doesn't index) common words called stop words (such as the, is, on, or, of, how, why, as well as certain single digits and single letters). Stop words are so common that they do little to narrow a search, and therefore they can safely be discarded. The indexer also ignores some punctuation and multiple spaces, as well as converting all letters to lowercase, to improve Google's performance.
Google's Query Processor
The query processor has several parts, including the user interface (search box); the “engine” that evaluates queries and matches them to relevant documents, and the results formatter.
Google considers over a hundred factors in determining which documents are most relevant to a query, including the popularity of the page, the position and size of the search terms within the page, and the
proximity of the search terms to one another on the page. PageRank is Google's system for ranking web pages.
Google also applies machine-learning techniques to improve its performance automatically by learning relationships and associations within the stored data. For example, the spelling-correcting system uses such techniques to figure out likely alternative spellings
Indexing the full text of the web allows Google to go beyond simply matching single search terms. Google gives more priority to pages that have search terms near each other and in the same order as the query. Google can also match multi-word phrases and sentences. Since Google indexes HTML code in addition to the text on the page, users can restrict searches on the basis of where query words appear, e.g., in the title, in the URL, in the body, and in links to the page, options offered by the Advanced-Search page and search operators.
Let's see how Google processes a query.
History of Site Ranking
In the early 1990's when the web was emerging, several sites having industry specific content were being added to the web each day. Web surfers, on the other hand, had very few tools to locate such sites, which they believed were out there but did not have a clue about their domain names or web addresses. With the birth of Yahoo in 1993, surfers were offered some relief. Yahoo classified each site it discovered in a neatly organized directory list and also embedded a search engine in its site to search for sites based on 'keywords' existing in its database. Several other search engines like AltaVista, Excite, and Lycos etc. followed the search trends offering site search facilities to users. Most of these search engines relied heavily on Meta Tags to classify the relevance of websites based on the keywords they found in the tags.
Things seemed to work out fine before site owners and webmasters realized the value of how they can 'embed' industry specific keyword phrases in their Meta Tags and other site code, thus manipulating their way to show up higher in search results. Over a period of time, search engine results started getting cluttered with sites that spammed their content with relevant keywords but had poor site content for the visitor. The very essence, credibility and importance of search engines was now being challenged to deal with how they could offer a more refined search output to their users.
What is PageRank ?
PageRank is a unique algorithm developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University and determines the importance of a web page measuring page importance on a scale from 0 - 10, where 10 is the highest. The main factor behind the PageRank algorithm is link popularity. If one site links to another site, then Google interprets this link as a vote, the more votes cast, obviously the more important the page must be. ...
From here on in, we'll occasionally refer to PageRank as “PR”.
Note:
Not all links are counted by Google. For instance, they filter out links from known link farms. Some links can cause a site to be penalized by Google. They rightly figure that webmasters cannot control which sites link to their sites, but they can control which sites they link out to. For this reason, links into a site cannot harm the site, but links from a site can be harmful if they link to penalized sites. So be careful which sites you link to. If a site has PR0, it is usually a penalty, and it would be unwise to link to it.
Emergence of Google PageRank
Google realized the problem conventional search engines faced in dealing with this situation. If the control of relevance remained with the webmasters, the ranking results would remain contaminated with sites artificially inflating their keyword relevance.
Web, by its very nature is based on hyperlinks, where sites link to other prominent sites. If you take the logic that you would tend to link to sites that you consider important, in essence, you are casting a vote in favor of the sites that you link to. When hundreds or thousands of sites link to a site, it is logical to assume that such a site would be good and important.
Taking this logic further the Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page formulated a Search Engine algorithm that shifted the ranking weight to off-page factors. They evolved a formula called PageRank (named after its founder Larry Page) where the algorithm would count the number of sites that link to a page and assign it an importance score on a scale of 1-10. More the number of sites that link to a page, higher its PageRank.
The Google Toolbar
You can download Google Toolbar (free) and install it in your Internet Explorer within minutes. Amongst other useful features, it displays the PageRank of each web page you visit.
The Google toolbar appears just below your Internet Explorer browser and can be used for making a search on the web from any page. Google toolbar displays the PageRank of each web page on a scale of 1-10. If you have the Google toolbar installed in your browser, you would be used to seeing each page's PageRank as you browse the web. Google does not display the PageRank of web pages that it has not indexed. Please note that the Toolbar displays the PageRank of individual pages and not the site as a whole.
PageRank in Google's own Words
Google explains PageRank as follows:
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an Indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.
Relationship between Search Engine Ranking and PageRank
While the exact algorithm of each search engine is a closely guarded secret, search engine analysts believe that the search engine results (ranking) is some form of a multiplier factor of ‘Page Relevance’ and ‘PageRank’. Simply put, the formula would look something like:
PR (A) = (1-d) + d (PR (t1)/C (t1) + ... + PR (tn)/C (tn))
That's the equation that calculates a page's PageRank. It's the original one that was published when PageRank was being developed, and it is probable that Google uses a variation of it but they aren't telling us what it is. It doesn't matter though, as this equation is good enough.
In the equation 't1 - tn' are pages linking to page A, ‘C’ is the number of outbound links that a page has and ‘d’ is a damping factor, usually set to 0.85.
We can think of it in a simpler way:-
A page's PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a “share” of the PageRank of every page that links to it) “share” = the linking page's PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page.
A page “votes” an amount of PageRank onto each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank that it has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value * 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to.
From this, we could conclude that a link from a page with PR4 and 5 outbound links are worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and 100 outbound links. The PageRank of a page that links to yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important. The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page will receive from it.
If the PageRank value differences between PR1, PR2 ...PR10 were equal then that conclusion would hold up, but many people believe that the values between PR1 and PR10 (the maximum) are set on a logarithmic scale, and there is very good reason for believing it. Nobody outside Google knows for sure one way or the other, but the chances are high that the scale is logarithmic, or similar.
Whichever scale Google uses, we can be sure of one thing. A link from another site increases our site's PageRank. Just remember to avoid links from link farms.
Source By : Google.com
“Googol” is the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, “Mathematics and the Imagination” by Kasner and James Newman. Google's play on the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web.
Google Technology
Google.com began as an academic search engine. In the paper that describes how the system was built, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page give an example of how quickly their spiders can work. They built their initial system to use multiple spiders, usually three at one time. Each spider could keep about 300 connections to Web pages open at a time. At its peak performance, using four spiders, their system could crawl over 100 pages per second, generating around 600 kilobytes of data each second.
Google runs on a distributed network of thousands of low-cost computers and can therefore carry out fast parallel processing. Parallel processing is a method of computation in which many calculations can be performed simultaneously, significantly speeding up data processing. Google has three distinct parts:
* Googlebot, a web crawler that finds and fetches web pages.
* The indexer that sorts every word on every page and stores the resulting index of words in a huge database.
* The query processor, which compares your search query to the index and recommends the documents that it considers most relevant.
Let's take a closer look at each part.
Googlebot, Google's web Crawler
Googlebot is Google's web crawling robot, which finds and retrieves pages on the web and hands them off to the Google indexer. It's easy to imagine Googlebot as a little spider scurrying across the strands of cyberspace, but in reality Googlebot doesn't traverse the web at all. It functions much like your web browser, by sending a request to a web server for a web page, downloading the entire page, and then handing it off to Google's indexer.
Googlebot consists of many computers requesting and fetching pages much more quickly than you can with your web browser. In fact, Googlebot can request thousands of different pages simultaneously. To avoid overwhelming web servers, or crowding out requests from human users, Googlebot deliberately makes requests of each individual web server more slowly than it's capable of doing.
Googlebot finds pages in two ways: through an add URL form, www.google.com/addurl.html, and through finding links by crawling the web.
allows rapid access to documents that contain user query terms.
To improve search performance, Google ignores (doesn't index) common words called stop words (such as the, is, on, or, of, how, why, as well as certain single digits and single letters). Stop words are so common that they do little to narrow a search, and therefore they can safely be discarded. The indexer also ignores some punctuation and multiple spaces, as well as converting all letters to lowercase, to improve Google's performance.
Google's Query Processor
The query processor has several parts, including the user interface (search box); the “engine” that evaluates queries and matches them to relevant documents, and the results formatter.
Google considers over a hundred factors in determining which documents are most relevant to a query, including the popularity of the page, the position and size of the search terms within the page, and the
proximity of the search terms to one another on the page. PageRank is Google's system for ranking web pages.
Google also applies machine-learning techniques to improve its performance automatically by learning relationships and associations within the stored data. For example, the spelling-correcting system uses such techniques to figure out likely alternative spellings
Indexing the full text of the web allows Google to go beyond simply matching single search terms. Google gives more priority to pages that have search terms near each other and in the same order as the query. Google can also match multi-word phrases and sentences. Since Google indexes HTML code in addition to the text on the page, users can restrict searches on the basis of where query words appear, e.g., in the title, in the URL, in the body, and in links to the page, options offered by the Advanced-Search page and search operators.
Let's see how Google processes a query.
History of Site Ranking
In the early 1990's when the web was emerging, several sites having industry specific content were being added to the web each day. Web surfers, on the other hand, had very few tools to locate such sites, which they believed were out there but did not have a clue about their domain names or web addresses. With the birth of Yahoo in 1993, surfers were offered some relief. Yahoo classified each site it discovered in a neatly organized directory list and also embedded a search engine in its site to search for sites based on 'keywords' existing in its database. Several other search engines like AltaVista, Excite, and Lycos etc. followed the search trends offering site search facilities to users. Most of these search engines relied heavily on Meta Tags to classify the relevance of websites based on the keywords they found in the tags.
Things seemed to work out fine before site owners and webmasters realized the value of how they can 'embed' industry specific keyword phrases in their Meta Tags and other site code, thus manipulating their way to show up higher in search results. Over a period of time, search engine results started getting cluttered with sites that spammed their content with relevant keywords but had poor site content for the visitor. The very essence, credibility and importance of search engines was now being challenged to deal with how they could offer a more refined search output to their users.
What is PageRank ?
PageRank is a unique algorithm developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University and determines the importance of a web page measuring page importance on a scale from 0 - 10, where 10 is the highest. The main factor behind the PageRank algorithm is link popularity. If one site links to another site, then Google interprets this link as a vote, the more votes cast, obviously the more important the page must be. ...
From here on in, we'll occasionally refer to PageRank as “PR”.
Note:
Not all links are counted by Google. For instance, they filter out links from known link farms. Some links can cause a site to be penalized by Google. They rightly figure that webmasters cannot control which sites link to their sites, but they can control which sites they link out to. For this reason, links into a site cannot harm the site, but links from a site can be harmful if they link to penalized sites. So be careful which sites you link to. If a site has PR0, it is usually a penalty, and it would be unwise to link to it.
Emergence of Google PageRank
Google realized the problem conventional search engines faced in dealing with this situation. If the control of relevance remained with the webmasters, the ranking results would remain contaminated with sites artificially inflating their keyword relevance.
Web, by its very nature is based on hyperlinks, where sites link to other prominent sites. If you take the logic that you would tend to link to sites that you consider important, in essence, you are casting a vote in favor of the sites that you link to. When hundreds or thousands of sites link to a site, it is logical to assume that such a site would be good and important.
Taking this logic further the Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page formulated a Search Engine algorithm that shifted the ranking weight to off-page factors. They evolved a formula called PageRank (named after its founder Larry Page) where the algorithm would count the number of sites that link to a page and assign it an importance score on a scale of 1-10. More the number of sites that link to a page, higher its PageRank.
The Google Toolbar
You can download Google Toolbar (free) and install it in your Internet Explorer within minutes. Amongst other useful features, it displays the PageRank of each web page you visit.
The Google toolbar appears just below your Internet Explorer browser and can be used for making a search on the web from any page. Google toolbar displays the PageRank of each web page on a scale of 1-10. If you have the Google toolbar installed in your browser, you would be used to seeing each page's PageRank as you browse the web. Google does not display the PageRank of web pages that it has not indexed. Please note that the Toolbar displays the PageRank of individual pages and not the site as a whole.
PageRank in Google's own Words
Google explains PageRank as follows:
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an Indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.
Relationship between Search Engine Ranking and PageRank
While the exact algorithm of each search engine is a closely guarded secret, search engine analysts believe that the search engine results (ranking) is some form of a multiplier factor of ‘Page Relevance’ and ‘PageRank’. Simply put, the formula would look something like:
PR (A) = (1-d) + d (PR (t1)/C (t1) + ... + PR (tn)/C (tn))
That's the equation that calculates a page's PageRank. It's the original one that was published when PageRank was being developed, and it is probable that Google uses a variation of it but they aren't telling us what it is. It doesn't matter though, as this equation is good enough.
In the equation 't1 - tn' are pages linking to page A, ‘C’ is the number of outbound links that a page has and ‘d’ is a damping factor, usually set to 0.85.
We can think of it in a simpler way:-
A page's PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a “share” of the PageRank of every page that links to it) “share” = the linking page's PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page.
A page “votes” an amount of PageRank onto each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank that it has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value * 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to.
From this, we could conclude that a link from a page with PR4 and 5 outbound links are worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and 100 outbound links. The PageRank of a page that links to yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important. The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page will receive from it.
If the PageRank value differences between PR1, PR2 ...PR10 were equal then that conclusion would hold up, but many people believe that the values between PR1 and PR10 (the maximum) are set on a logarithmic scale, and there is very good reason for believing it. Nobody outside Google knows for sure one way or the other, but the chances are high that the scale is logarithmic, or similar.
Whichever scale Google uses, we can be sure of one thing. A link from another site increases our site's PageRank. Just remember to avoid links from link farms.
Source By : Google.com
What is Search Engine?
Internet search engines (e.g. Google, AltaVista) help users find web pages on a given subject. The search engines maintain databases of web sit
es and use programs (often referred to as “spiders” or “robots”) to collect information, which is then indexed by the search engine. Similar services are provided by “directories”, which maintain ordered lists of websites e.g. Yahoo!
How Internet Search Engines Work
The good news about the Internet and its most visible component, the World Wide Web, is that there are hundreds of millions of pages available, waiting to present information on an amazing variety of topics.
When you need to know about a particular subject, ho
w do you know which pages to read? If you're like most people, you visit an Internet search engine.
Internet search engines are special sites on the Web that are designed to help people find information stored on other sites. There are differences in
the ways various search engines work, but they all perform three basic tasks:
- They search the Internet -- or select pieces of the Internet -- based on important words.
- They keep an index of the words they find, and w here they find them.
- They allow users to look for words or combinations of words found in that index.
Early search engines held an index of a few hundred thousand pages and documents, and received maybe one or two thousand inquiries each day. Today, a top search engine will index hundreds of millions of pages, and respond to tens of milli
ons of queries per day.
Before a search engine can tell you where a file or document is, it must be found. To find information on the hundreds of millions of Web pages that exist, a search engine employs special software robots, called spiders, to build lists of the words found on Web sites. When a spider is building its lists, the process is called Web crawling. (The
re are some disadvantages to calling part of the Internet the World Wide Web -- a large set of arachnid-centric names for tools is one of them.) In order to build and maintain a useful list of words, a search engine's spiders have to look at a lot of pages.
How does any spider start its travels over the Web? The usual starting points are lists of heavily used servers and very popular pages. The spider will begin with a popular site, indexing the words on its pages and following every link found within the site. In this way, the spidering system quickly begins to travel, spreading out across the mo
st widely used portions of the Web.
Types of Search Engines
The term “search engine” is often used generically to describe both crawler-based search engines and human-powered directories. These two types of search engines gather their listings in radically different ways.
Crawler-Based Search Engines
Crawler-based search engines, such as Google, create their listings automatically. They “crawl” or “spider” the web, then people search through what they have found.
If you change your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these changes, and that can affect how you are listed. Page titles, body copy and other elements all play a role.
Human-Powered Directories
A human-powered directory, such as the Open Directory, depends on humans for its listings. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted.
Changing your web pages has no effect on your listing. Things that are useful for improving a listing with a search engine have nothing to do with improving a listing in a directory. The only exception is that a good site, with good content, might be more likely to get reviewed for free than a poor site.
“Hybrid Search Engines” Or Mixed Results
In the web's early days, it used to be that a search engine either presented crawler-based results or human-powered listings. Today, it extremely common for both types of results to be presented. Usually, a hybrid search engine will favor one type of listings over another. For example, MSN Search is more likely to present human-powered listings from LookSmart. However, it does also present crawler-based results (as provided by Inktomi), especially for more obscure queries.
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