The Google Algorithm – Google Search – is made up of more than 200 factors, more than 10,000 subfactors, influenced by artificial intelligence, and sometimes tweaked (adjusted to make perfect) more than 500 times in a month.

Google Search currently helps more than 92% of all internet users find answers to their questions and solutions to their problems.

Google now processes more than:

  • 63,000 searches per second
  • 3.8 million searches per minute
  • 5.6 billion searches per day
  • 2 trillion searches per year

Everyone uses Google Search because we “TRUST” Google’s Algorithm and its ability to provide us with the “BEST” answer to our question and the “RIGHT” solution to our problem.

Google Search is based on a simple premise: give searchers the “best” answers to their query.

“The perfect search engine will understand exactly what you mean and give you back exactly what you want”, Larry Page, Co-Founder of Google.

How Google Search Works

For any search, there are hundreds or thousands of sites that offer a potential link or insight related to the query. As a result, Google Search needs to accomplish three goals:

  • Disqualify all sites and pages that aren’t relevant.
  • Return a list of sites and pages that are relevant.
  • Rank and prioritize those sites and pages in order of importance to identify which are the most relevant.

In order for Google to provide users with the best solution to their problem, Google’s ranking system sorts through hundreds of billions of web pages in a fraction of a second. Then, lists the results on Search Engine Results Pages or SERPs according to rank or PageRank.


Google’s Internet is based on MERITOCRACY.

Search Engine Results not only depend on the relevancy of the content but also the validity of the source. Consequently, Google ranks sources specific to each search. Not only is the quality of content important to Google, but so is the authority of the source. Google’s objective is to provide its users with the most quality content from the most credible sources.

The Google Algorithm is one of the most complex and most valuable algorithms in the world and it keeps getting better.

Just when you think you’ve grasped all the specific details of Google’s algorithm, it’s important to note that changes occur all the time.

By understanding the historical trends in what’s changed and staying on top of how things are evolving, website owners stand the best chance of developing and implementing strategies that lead to great long-term rankings.

Navigating Google’s current landscape requires not only a general understanding of search engine algorithms and how they operate but the specifics of recent updates. In the last few years, Google has implemented a number of changes that have affected site owners.

There are now 200 key factors of Google’s Algorithm that affect the ranking of a website. Here’s a closer look at each of these updates and what you need to know.

 Google’s Algorithm Search Engine Optimization Factors (200) broken down in their corresponding Categories: 

Google Domain Authority Ranking Factors
Google PageRank Factors
Google Site Ranking Factors
Google Social Media Ranking Factors
Google Domain Ranking Factors
Google Ranking Factors for User Interaction
Google Special Algorithm Factors
Google On-Site WebSpam Factors
Google Off-Site WebSpam Factors
Google Brand Ranking Factors

Google Algorithm Updates

This Chart illustrates the breakdown of the New Google Algorithm Factors according to 72 of the leading SEO experts surveyed at Moz’s biennial SEO meeting.

(Click to Enlarge & Back to Escape)

New-SEO-Pie-ChartPNG

Trust/Authority of the Host Domain  23.87%

Domain Authority is a score (on a 100-point scale) predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. Use the Domain Authority when comparing one site to another or tracking the “strength” of your website over time.

Over 40 signals are included in this calculation.  Your website’s Domain Authority score will often fluctuate.  For this reason, it’s best to use Domain Authority as a competitive metric against other sites as opposed to a historic measure of your internal SEO efforts.

Note – It’s easier to grow your score from 20 to 30 than it would be to grow from 70 to 80.

Link Popularity of the Specific Page  22.33%

Link popularity is a term used to describe the number of links to a webpage from the rest of the internet. If popularity is high on a particular page or website and many people are linking to your page, then it must contain content and information that people find useful.

Anchor Text of External Links to the Page  20.26%

Anchor text is the visible, clickable characters and words that hyperlink to another location on the web.

Mollify helps companies implement a Digital Marketing Strategy. In this phrase, Digital Marketing Strategy is the Anchor Text.

Search engines use this anchor text to help determine the subject matter of the linked page. In the example above, the Anchor Text will tell the search engine that when users search for Digital Marketing, Mollify is a relevant site for that search.

When breadcrumb navigation is enabled on a website, it creates anchor text links on every page of the website which link back to the homepage of the site.

On-Page Keywords Usage 15.04%

Keyword placement is much more important than frequency.  Posting “Online Marketing” once in the title tag on your website and once in the header has much more significance than stuffing the word into the body copy 10 times.

Google breaks your site down into key areas, with meta information and headers taking top priority, body copy taking secondary priority, and sidebars and footers taking the last priority.

When Google now scans your site for information, it no longer pulls out the keyword phrases it thinks are relevant and pairs them to user queries. Instead, Google interprets the data on your website and begins to form its own conclusions about your website and your business.

Hosting Data  6.91%

Your hosting provider can affect your Search Engine Optimization: performance (speed), availability (up-time), security and SEO awareness.

Clickthrough Rate and Traffic
  (CTR)  6.29%

Clickthrough Rate is a measured by dividing the number of times a link appears on a search engine results page by the number of times it is actually clicked on by a visitor. For example, if a link appears one hundred times, referred to as 100 hundred impressions, and it is clicked on twenty times, the click-through rate of that particular link would be twenty percent.

The CTR is calculated by as follows: (No. of clicks/No. of Impressions) x 100.
20 Clicks/100 Impressions = .20 x 100 = 20% Clickthrough Rate

The CTR shows the total percentage of people clicking on your results on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

Properly optimizing your description tags will increase your clickthrough rate for organic searches.  Descriptions that list the target keywords or keyword phrases, as well as descriptions that are well written and concise can draw visitors to click on that particular link more frequently.

Learning the average CTR for different positions in the organic listing helps you understand where most of the traffic goes.  It’s of vital importance to rank 1st – 3rd or at the very least, first page for your main key terms.

Social Graph Metrics 5.30%

What are they looking at?

  • explicit acquaintance relationship (e.g., designation as friends, colleagues, fans, blog feed followers, etc.),
  • an implicit acquaintance relationship (e.g., friends in common, messages sent between users, viewing another user’s profile page, etc.),
  • a common group membership (e.g., membership in a group related to a particular interest, membership in a group related to a particular geographic area, etc.),
  • participation in a common activity (e.g., users posting messages to the same forum, users playing an online game together, etc.), etc.
  • Users that share a link may be likely to have common interests and may be likely to post content to their profile pages related to similar topics.
  • Links for a user with a profile page containing content known to pertain to a particular subject of interest can indicate that the profile pages of other linked-to users are likely to also contain content that pertains to the particular subject of interest.
  • Links among users of a social network can be used to propagate classifications (e.g., advertisement-related content, illegal content, inappropriate content for minors, etc.) for content that has already been identified as pertaining to a particular subject of interest to other content for which a classification is unknown.

They discuss in some of the patents the differences between explicit and implicit connections;

  • Explicit; designation as friends, colleagues, fans, blog feed followers, etc.
  • Implicit; friends in common, messages sent between users, viewing another user’s profile page, etc.
  • Common groups; membership in a group related to a particular interest, membership in a group related to a particular geographic area, etc.
  • Common activities; e.g., users posting messages to the same forum, users playing an online game together, etc.

With the use of Software, Analysis, and Algorithms,
Molify Helps Companies Enhance Their Digital Business.