Google Publishes Guide to Current & Retired Ranking Systems – Learn More!
As lawyers, we keep seeing wealthy law school grads use daddy’s money to circumvent us by buying links and paying off anyone to get their organic rankings. So it can be challenging to keep up with all the latest updates with Google search ranking systems, unless you cheat, until now. Google introduced a new system where the tech giant publishes all the current and retired ranking systems allowing users to stay updated. Let’s review the details of the new ranking systems with Circle of Legal Trust.
Google Publishes Guide on More Notable Ranking Systems
Google uses automated search ranking systems that consider many factors to help rank web pages on their search index, allowing internet users more relevant search results.
In addition to publishing a new guide to keep tabs on all the current and retired ranking systems, Google also introduced new terminologies to distinguish the difference between rankings and updates.
According to the tech giant, a ranking system is an automated system continuously running in the background. In contrast, a ranking update is a one-time update to the ranking systems.
For example, the recent Helpful Content ranking system is always working in the background to provide users with relevant search results constantly. On the other hand, an update can further improve how the ranking systems work.
List of Google Search Ranking Systems
The following are some search ranking systems continuously running in the background.
Exact Match Domain System
The exact match domain system is an AI system that ensures that ranking systems do not give too much credit to sites with domain names that match queries.
Helpful Content System
An update following the penguin system, the helpful content system helps rank pages based on their relevancy to users rather than gain search engine traffic. The helpful content system penalizes websites that are keyword intensive without offering readers quality and valuable content.
Local News Systems
A ranking system that helps bring local news results to relevant queries. These make it easy for users looking for relevant authoritative information pertaining to their search and also promote local news sites.
Passage Ranking System
An automated system Google uses to identify parts of a web page to check its relevancy to the web search.
MUM
It is an AI system capable of understanding languages but is not used by Google to rank web pages.
Google uses MUM for specific applications, such as searches for Covid-19 vaccination information, allowing the system to improve the search results and show users authoritative factual data/information.
Product Reviews System
Product reviews are often low-quality, affecting a business, but the product reviews system promotes high-quality product reviews by rewarding the webpage. High quality means the product review is expertly written based on original research.
RankBrain
RankBrain is an AI system Google uses to understand the link between words and concepts, allowing it to return results that don’t necessarily contain the same words. It understands the content and how it links to other search words and concepts.
Spam Detection Systems
Some websites violate Google’s spam policies in a bid to rank top of Google search results, preventing users from accessing relevant and useful web pages.
However, spam detection systems (automated systems) keep all spam websites away from search queries, similar to how emails remove spam.
Link Analysis Systems
This system helps search engines use links across the web to find pages and rank them in relation to searches. It also analyses webpage links and understands how the website uses links.
Reliable Information Systems
This is a group of systems that Google uses to discourage low-quality content and promote authoritative pages to help users gain access to reliable information.
Google Search Ranking Systems That Are Not Operational Anymore
According to the recent guide published by Google, the ranking systems that are not operational include Hummingbird, secure site system, site diversity system, page speed system, mobile-friendly ranking system, panda system, secure sites system, penguin system, and others.
It is important to note that Google didn’t completely retire all these systems. Google incorporated some of these in their existing running systems, such as the mobile-friendly ranking system added into their page experience system.
