Anybody can outline the most current Google algorithm in terms of ranking? What are the difference between the current and the past half of the year? The way GG ranks by offpage and inpage factors, etc.?

Okay I will spill the beans .... kill two chickens and spread the blood over your terminal.... then chant for 30 minutes... Google is God... Google is God

(well if anyone outside Google had the algorithm it would be stupid to publish it)

Not really a real answer is it? Offpage -- the main difference I am seeing is that links need to be of related topics to count.

Note to moderators, you all are going to have to actually think about your answers if you want to build a community.

>>offpage and inpage factors,

callback, there will always be fluctuations in weighting for scoring over time, but the basic elements of what goes into quality optimization stay the same.

One thing to keep in mind is that the line isn't always completely clear between onpage and offpage factors. For example, what's "onpage" for one page is "offpage" for another, and if both those pages happen to be within the same site it becomes a more important factor. Or even within the same "corpus of documents," if we look at a site not as isolated unit but as part of a "neighborhood" once linking relationships are established. It goes beyond the definition we usually give to onpage and offpage factors.

One of the clearest examples of that is keywords in outbound anchor text. If page-a is about the nutritional value of broccoli, and it's clear in the onpage optimization, if there's a link out to page-b on the same site about cooking broccoli, with "broccoli recipes" in the anchor text, what's onpage for one is an offpage factor for the other. Get enough pages like that in a site that's about vegetables with inbound links to the site from "food" sites and a few strategic links out to the Dept. of Agriculture, and it goes even beyond onpage and offpage, it's getting into semantic relationships and theming - and putting a site into a "neighborhood" - as long as the algo can recognize the relationships between the factors, which it's up to the optimizer to see to when planning a site, particularly the navigational scheme and page naming conventions.

Trying to cook up the secret sauce for Google is like trying to hit a moving target, but it gets to be easier and less stressful for us long term if we keep in mind that Google is all about relationships. By basic definition, that's what the original PR algo is - the relationship between a page casting a vote and the page being voted for. We can see it, by philosophy, if we look at their corporate culture and their dealings with the press, the public and with webmasters.

For a long time the trump card was high PR, or inbound anchor text; recently it's appeared to be heavy weighting on outbound anchor text (which incidentally has been important for a long time but people who knew weren't telling), and who knows what's next?

So the key to peace of mind is optimizing pages (for Ink/Yahoo with a bit lower density) and establishing relationships through linking both within a site and with other sites for Google, inbound and outbound, staying within guidelines they've laid out. Then it's trying to be observant to catch those important little details over time - which is the hardest part, but it's what we need to do to stay competitive.

Thanks for the great input! I just got back from a bus. trip and just checked this great response!

God bless us!

Sorry for the glib answer... so chicken sacrifice aside...

OffPage and OnPage are the 2 broadest categories.

OnPage covers Title tags (a solid factor), domain and page names (how big is debated), keyword density, then style elements: <h1 tags>,<bold tags>, alt tags, anchor text in internal links, outbound anchor text (link to a major site in your industry)... there are more but these will help to start.

OffPage covers inbound links: recip links having less than one way inbound links, the more relevant the better the impact but sheer numbers work - just look at miserable failure.
The number of pages in your site can help. It makes the site appear authoritative.
Use of keyword text links has recently shown to be a bigger influence and links from other sites in the industry with good PR works well too.
The pure number of the links that get counted is also a factor - but one link from a PR9 page can do a lot more then 100 from small much lower rated sites.

There are two areas to be considered, that of relevancy and that of link popularity.

Google considers each topic seperately, with link popularity being handled by PageRank, which is computed seperately about once a month and then stored for combining with relevancy calculations at ranking time. While there are those who have proposed the PageRank is no longer in use or that the formula has been changed, I do not believe this to be the case, as I have yet to see any evidence to support such theories. IMO PageRank makes a very small contribution to the final ranking of a page, perhaps no more than 5 percent overall.

Relevancy is considered from both on page and off page factors.

At the present time the most important offpage factor is the anchor text of inbound links, (and it may be the single most important ranking factor overall) which I feel is not at this time subject to relevancy tests or enhancements, ie it is just the text in the anchor of the link that is important, not the page it comes from.

Onpage factors are, in rough order of importance:
Page Title
Header tags
keyword density, location and proximity
Various formatting factors like bold, italic and large fonts.
Minor tags such as alt tags on non-linked graphics.

This is all of course my interpretation of Googles Ranking Alogrithm, but it does seem to work.

I agree with your overall assessment.

Mel, if I can nitpick just a bit, I haven't seen any indication that the alt attributes of non-linked images get indexed by Google. If they're not indexed, I don't see how they can play even a small role in ranking.

Have you seen a change in this?

>>I haven't seen any indication that the alt attributes of non-linked images get indexed by Google.
>>Have you seen a change in this?

Even if the alt attributes aren't linked, they were still showing up in the text-only version of the cache as of a few weeks ago, which could be taken as an indication that they're being indexed:

Alt Attributes in Text-Only Cache (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=413)

Whether they're worth anything unlinked for scoring purposes is open for testing and debate, though they're still a good idea to include for usability purposes and validation, if that's a consideration. But whichever way, they can't have as much value as those that are linked.

That's true. Alts do show up in the text-only cache, so it's safe to say they're indexed. But try doing a search, in quotes, of the exact text of an alt attribute you believe to be unique. For every one I've tried, I get no results.

So I was clearly wrong to say they don't get indexed, but at least for the time being, I'm sticking with the belief that they don't contribute to rankings.

I'd agree about them not counting for ranking, which is a pretty good idea since there's too much opportunity for outright keyword stuffing; in some cases I've seen a tiny bit of flowery prose on the page for marketing purposes and entire long paragraphs included in the alt attributes.

That wouldn't necessarily by done by an optimizer wanting to use the linked alt attribute for purposes of anchor text benefit for the page being linked to.

HI Qwerty as Marcia has pointed out, they are indexed and it appears from the source code of the Google text only cache that they appear to Google as simply page content. I have never assumed that they contributed to anything else, just some more words on the page, but if you can find an alt tag that has unique text and that text cannot be found in a Google search then I would surely consider dropping them from even that small role.

I have added such an alt to a page which is spidered often, and so if after a few days a search for shellordian848 turns up no results, then I think we can say that the alt text of non linked images is not parsed into the word barrels and thus is not a factor in ranking.

You can test it with the image in the upper right-hand corner of this page (http://www.annasinkovska.com/contact.htm) from a site I run. The alt attribute of that image is "Anna Sinkovska in a picture taken for Fashion Daily News" and a search on that exact text (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22Anna+Sinkovska+in+a+picture+taken+for+Fashion +Daily+News%22) brings up no results.

And here's a link to the page's cached text: http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:http://www.annasinkovska.com/contact.htm&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=windows-1252&strip=1

Yes that seems to confirm it Qwerty, the alt text is clearly in the cached page, but it is not found in a Google search, so lets just drop the alt text of unlinked images as something that has any bearing on rankings.

Yes that seems to confirm it Qwerty, the alt text is clearly in the cached page, but it is not found in a Google search, so lets just drop the alt text of unlinked images as something that has any bearing on rankings.
That saves a bunch of time....

It saves time AW, but it's not too friendly for accessibility and ends up dumping out a lot or errors when running pages through validators. Whether it counts for rankings or not, it still isn't a bad idea to use them. Besides, we don't know what value they might have even down the road. It's never a mistake to stay with what's respectable and according to standards, but right now this sure doesn't look like it's worth the time laboring over, just what's roughly descriptive would do.

When I say that it doesn't affect ranking, I certainly don't mean to imply that it should be skipped. Absolutely every image should have an alt attribute, and as I see it there are three categories into which images and their alts can be classified:

1. Linked Images should have alt attributes that describe the target of the link. This will normally involve that page's keywords.

2. Non-linked Images should have alt attributes that describe the image for those who can't see it.

3. Non-representational Images such as spacers should have empty alt attributes.

Note that for linked images, the rule for non-linked images should also apply, assuming one is using images that aren't intended to confuse the user. That is, a picture of a dog is not likely to be used as a link to a page about French literature of the Renaissance. If for some reason it is, you're going to have to decide whether you're going to give it an alt attribute that describes the image (for usability/accessibility) or one that describes the target (for ranking).

>>3. Non-representational Images such as spacers should have empty alt attributes

Spacers or even decorative or tiny graphics used instead of <hr> for demarking sections. Please think twice about using those to link to pages that are inappropriate using alt attributes with keywords to give them an anchor text boost. When people do that, if people such as myself come across it, we *will* go on a hunting expedition to see what other interesting things you're up to. I've dug up whole networks of cross-linked SEO''d sites that way.

Keep it clean and stay safe from scrutiny.

Hi folks,
I'm a newbie here. You people are having a velly intellesting discussion here. I'd like to jump in and ask your opinion about links.

<a href="/redir/site.asp?Target=www.blah.com......">

Is this type of link equivalent to <a href="http://www.blah.com"> or is this confusing to a spider?

If you paid a lot of money to get listed in a directory, would you be happy with an asp redirect type link on that directory?

What about javascript links?

Thanks :rolleyes:

neckbone

neckbone, unless they were delivering a decent amount of direct, targeted traffic I personally wouldn't pay a thing for that kind of link.

Here's something I noticed about backlinks with Yahoo

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=658

No idea if it pertains to Google, nor have I tried to find out, but in the long run it's a lot less complicated and more beneficial to have direct links. I do understand the need for link tracking on outbound links - it's just my personal feeling of what has value.