Joeychgo
06-08-2005, 12:16 PM
Snippets of Insight into Google and How they work as written by GoogleGuy on Webmaster World - GoogleGuy is a Google Engineer.
"The external backlinks/PR that we show have at least a couple factors that complicate analysis. First off, they are a snapshot in time, and the actual backlinks/PageRank used for ranking are from a different time interval. Another complicating factor is that we don't show every backlink on Google; we only show a subset of the backlinks we have internally."
This is confirming what some of us already know. Google doesnt report all backlinks via the link:http://www.yoursite.com (http://www.yoursite.com/) search query. If you want a more accurate look, do the same query in Yahoo or MSN - you'll get a more complete result.
"we typically show new backlink sample sets every 3-5 weeks or so. We have a bank of machines that computes PageRank continuously (and continually, I suppose; I wasn't an English major), but we only export new visible PageRanks every 3-4 months or so."
So that should answer the "when is the next Page Rank update gonna be" questions.
how to handle www vs. non-www, relative vs. absolute linking, and links to different pages such as / vs. index.html vs. default.asp. My rule of thumb is to pick a root page and be as consistent as possible. I lean toward choosing http://www.yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://www.yourdomain.com/) but that's just me; http://yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://yourdomain.com/) would work as well. Then I recommend that you make things as simple as possible for spiders. I recommend absolute links instead of relative links, because there's less chance for a spider (not just Google, but any spider) to get confused. In the same fashion, I would try to be consistent on your internal linking. Once you've picked a root page and decided on www vs. non-www, make sure that all your links follow the same convention and point to the root page that you picked. Also, I would use a 301 redirect or rewrite so that your root page doesn't appear twice. For example, if you select http://www.yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://www.yourdomain.com/) as your root page, then if a spider tries to fetch http://yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://yourdomain.com/) (without the www), your web server should do a permanent (301) redirect to your root page at http://www.yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://www.yourdomain.com/)
What this is saying is, pick something and stick with it. Remember this when your linking. Its best to use your full URL - http://www.yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://www.yourdomain.com/) is better then http://yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://yourdomain.com/) -- and be consistant. You should go through your site and make sure all they URLs point to the full URL.
This includes any links you place in signatures or on other sites. Also, Google and other search engines use anchor text to help figure out what your site relates to and thus how to rank you in the search results. SO its always better to use a link such as Your Keyword (http://www.yourdomain.com/) then to use http://www.yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://www.yourdomain.com/) or www.yourdomain.com (http://www.yourdomain.com/) in your linking, including signatures.
The other point I found in there that was important, was about making it easy for search engines. The easier you make it for them the better they will spider and index your site. This is why, for example, I personally dont like skins. Skins make vBulletin very graphic intensive and more work for search engines, and thus they wont spider as fast or as much. This is why the ARCHIVE HACK works well. It is quite basic and has very little extra HTML or graphics, its pretty much pur information which is what Google and other Search Engines want.
"The external backlinks/PR that we show have at least a couple factors that complicate analysis. First off, they are a snapshot in time, and the actual backlinks/PageRank used for ranking are from a different time interval. Another complicating factor is that we don't show every backlink on Google; we only show a subset of the backlinks we have internally."
This is confirming what some of us already know. Google doesnt report all backlinks via the link:http://www.yoursite.com (http://www.yoursite.com/) search query. If you want a more accurate look, do the same query in Yahoo or MSN - you'll get a more complete result.
"we typically show new backlink sample sets every 3-5 weeks or so. We have a bank of machines that computes PageRank continuously (and continually, I suppose; I wasn't an English major), but we only export new visible PageRanks every 3-4 months or so."
So that should answer the "when is the next Page Rank update gonna be" questions.
how to handle www vs. non-www, relative vs. absolute linking, and links to different pages such as / vs. index.html vs. default.asp. My rule of thumb is to pick a root page and be as consistent as possible. I lean toward choosing http://www.yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://www.yourdomain.com/) but that's just me; http://yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://yourdomain.com/) would work as well. Then I recommend that you make things as simple as possible for spiders. I recommend absolute links instead of relative links, because there's less chance for a spider (not just Google, but any spider) to get confused. In the same fashion, I would try to be consistent on your internal linking. Once you've picked a root page and decided on www vs. non-www, make sure that all your links follow the same convention and point to the root page that you picked. Also, I would use a 301 redirect or rewrite so that your root page doesn't appear twice. For example, if you select http://www.yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://www.yourdomain.com/) as your root page, then if a spider tries to fetch http://yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://yourdomain.com/) (without the www), your web server should do a permanent (301) redirect to your root page at http://www.yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://www.yourdomain.com/)
What this is saying is, pick something and stick with it. Remember this when your linking. Its best to use your full URL - http://www.yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://www.yourdomain.com/) is better then http://yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://yourdomain.com/) -- and be consistant. You should go through your site and make sure all they URLs point to the full URL.
This includes any links you place in signatures or on other sites. Also, Google and other search engines use anchor text to help figure out what your site relates to and thus how to rank you in the search results. SO its always better to use a link such as Your Keyword (http://www.yourdomain.com/) then to use http://www.yourdomain.com/ (http://www.webmasterworld.com/ra.cgi?f=30&d=29720&url=http://www.yourdomain.com/) or www.yourdomain.com (http://www.yourdomain.com/) in your linking, including signatures.
The other point I found in there that was important, was about making it easy for search engines. The easier you make it for them the better they will spider and index your site. This is why, for example, I personally dont like skins. Skins make vBulletin very graphic intensive and more work for search engines, and thus they wont spider as fast or as much. This is why the ARCHIVE HACK works well. It is quite basic and has very little extra HTML or graphics, its pretty much pur information which is what Google and other Search Engines want.
