There are some other pages about Google Ranking Signals that don’t consider up-to-date information or sometimes use questionable critical thinking to argue that some of the signals that they include are actually something that Google considers. I’ve been blogging about patents from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Apple since 2005, and have been exploring what those might say are ranking signals for over a decade.
Representatives from Google have stated that “Just because we have a patent on something, doesn’t mean we are using it.” The first time I heard them say that was after Go Daddy started advertising domain registrations of up to 10 years, because one Google patent (Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data) said that they might look at length of domain registration as a ranking signal, based on the thought that a “spammer would likely only register a domain for a period of one year.” (but actually, many people register domains for one year, and have their registrations on auto-renewal, so a one-year registration is not evidence that a person registering a domain for just one year is a spammer.).
I’ve included some ranking signals that are a little older, but most of the things I’ve listed are from the past five years, often with blog posts I’ve written about them, and patents that go with them. This list is a compilation of blog posts that I have been working on for years, taking many hours of regular searching through patent filings, and reading blog posts from within the Search and SEO industries, and reading through many patents that I didn’t write about, and many that I have. If you have questions about any of the signals I’ve listed, please ask about them in the comments.
Some of the patents I have blogged about have not been implemented by Google yet but could be. A company such as Google files a patent to protect the intellectual property behind their ideas, the work that their search engineers and testing teams put into those ideas. It is worth looking at, reading, and understanding many of these patents because they provide some insights into ideas that Google may have explored when developing ranking signals, and they may give you ideas of things that you may want to explore, and questions to keep in mind when you are working on optimizing a site. Patents are made public to inspire people to innovate and invent and understand new ideas and inventions.
I have added a section to this post that covers Additional Ranking Signals, after realizing that I missed at least one that I thought was really worth including, and anticipating adding more to this page. At some point in time, I may have to create a part 2 to this post, but I will decide that when it seems to make sense to do that.
