A lot of people try to figure out how Google´s algorithms work; but no one could ever really say that he found the solution. It all started with the PageRank algorithm which was really simple and so could be analyzed by experts very well. This infographic shows how complex this simple algorithm got over time.
The guys from Search Engine Journal brought together all possible ranking factors which Google probably uses.
They put them in different categories like
– Domain factors
– Page-level factors
– Site-level factors
– Backlink factors
– User interaction
– Special algorithm rules
– social signals
– brand signals
– on-site webspam factors
– off page web spam factors
The most interesting category for me is „Social Signals“.
Social signals will get more and more important in the next years and it seems that already the „Number of tweets“ of a website has influence on the ranking of the website now. Or the „Number of Facebook likes“. Google can´t see who liked it, but it seems like they use the number of how many people liked it.
Take a look at the infographic and get some impressions of how the Google algorithm might work. But we will never really know…