Real World Ranking Factors – Authority Scores and PageRank in Google and Others
Link: Real World Ranking Factors
This article discusses the factors that Google uses to rank pages in search results. The article addresses past ways of ranking, other engines’ ranking factors, and theorizes how Google currently ranks pages.
The article mentions that artificial intelligence is employed heavily in ranking pages. The most relevant fact about this ranking process is the use of authority scores, and specifically, what Google calls and Information Retrieval (IR) score. Google has patents that mention IR, which is used to set relevance for search terms. However, it is unclear how Google calculates the IR score, or how many factors might affect the score.
The article mentions the concept of re-ranking. This is distinct from the PageRank updates we have seen in class. Instead of an update based on authority, these re-ranking factors are based on phrasing and semantics. The interplay of multiple factors that are used in re-ranking after an initial score is calculated might create countless factors that affect the overall score of a page.
All of the possible ranking metrics and interplay of factors make the process of ranking pages extremely complicated in the real world, especially when compared to basic page-rank. There could be any number of factors at play. Because this article takes a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective, the complexity of Google’s ranking process poses a daunting challenge. When it comes to practically applying the limited knowledge of ranking factors, an expert quoted in the article puts it nicely, “It Depends”.