by Rick Hendershot, Marketing Bites

A recent Google patent application has SEO community buzzing. At a bare minimum this document reveals direction Google is taking its future search criteria. Changes in way Google will be evaluating pages for search rankings are intended to address two major problems:

- Search engine spam, and - Ensuring that "fresh" documents score higher than "stale" ones

Here is a summary of some of general principles outlined in document. Most SEO specialists agree these are reasonable principles, and it is only a matter of time before they are adopted.

1. Anchor text of links is still very important. Focus on your anchor text. It should contain your most important keyword.

2. Google expects that anchor texts will vary. A lot of identical anchor text suggests an "unnatural" linking pattern. Anchor texts should vary, but contain related phrases.

3. Google will record when specific links were first discovered, and watch how they change over time. Links with a long life span are considered more valuable than links with a short life span. This adds support to link delay theory -- that links do not start "counting" until they have been in place for a few months. So get working on those links right now, but don't expect immediate gratification from Google.

The Google patent application submitted in March, 2005 has generated a good deal of debate among search engine optimization experts. The patent document contains many general suggestions about direction Google wants to move their search criteria and ranking techniques in near future.

The document points out two areas in particular in which "there remains a need to improve quality of results generated by search engines." (0009) These two areas are

(a) artificially inflated rank due to spamming techniques, and (b) stale documents that rank higher than fresh ones, and therefore "degrade search results".

Google's ingenious proposal is to deal with both of these problems by focusing on history of web documents and web links. Assuming they have technology to record such a massive amount of information, their objective seems to be to keep a detailed record of pattern of changes within web pages.

This should address spam issue by revealing unnatural patterns of change. Too many links too quickly suggests "unnatural" linking activity has been taking place. Significant links that come and go might suggest that expensive links are being purchased on a temporary basis and are not "natural".

And it should address "staleness" issue by looking at way specific pages have been updated. If a page that has ranked high in specific searches has not been updated for a period of time, this will be seen as a reason to downgrade importance of that page. Other pages with more activity, more up to date information, and more linking activity, all other things being equal, will rank higher.

History is more important than ever