Written on April 18th, 2007 at 10:04 am by Darren Rowse

How Google Blogsearch ranks your Posts… In their own words!

Search Engine Optimization 96 comments

The following guest post was submitted by Alister Cameron. Read his blog at Alister Cameron - Blogologist.

I was reading through the Google Blogsearch patent application today. It was filed back in September 2005 and never mentions Blogsearch by name, of course. In reading through all the convoluted legaleze, I discovered what I think are some rather intriguing statements, that give us a tantalizing insight into how the architects of Google’s “secret recipe” think…

Now, this post is probably not going to answer as many questions of yours as it may raise new ones. But the point I want to make here is this: Google determines a quality score for every blog post you write based on more factors that most of us have ever really understood. Indeed, the range of measurements contributing to Google’s quality score applied to your blog posts is nothing short of amazing.

Truthfully, I found myself thinking of Big Brother as I tried to grasp the magnitude of Google’s data-gathering capabilities. You’ll see what I mean as we dig deep into the bowels of this patent application. Along the way, I will consider some ramifications for how you blog and how you approach the marketing of your blog.

We need to dive into the text of the patent application here, specifically a section titled Determining a Quality Score for a Blog Document, starting with a summary of what Google will take into consideration when looking at the “positive indicators” of a blog post (we will not look at the negative indicators today):

[0037] Positive indicators as to the quality of the blog document may be identified (act 620). Such indicators may include a popularity of the blog document, an implied popularity of the blog document, the existence of the blog document in blogrolls, the existence of the blog document in a high quality blogroll, tagging of the blog document, references to the blog document by other sources, and a pagerank of the blog document. It will be appreciated that other indicators may also be used.

Each of the “indicators” listed above are now detailed in turn, and it’s here that Google start to be more revealing about their methods and intentions…

A Key Indicator: Feed Readership

[0038] The popularity of the blog document may be a positive indication of the quality of that blog document. A number of news aggregator sites (commonly called “news readers” or “feed readers”) exist where individuals can subscribe to a blog document (through its feed). Such aggregators store information describing how many individuals have subscribed to given blog documents. A blog document having a high number of subscriptions implies a higher quality for the blog document. Also, subscriptions can be validated against “subscriptions spam” (where spammers subscribe to their own blog documents in an attempt to make them “more popular”) by validating unique users who subscribed, or by filtering unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the subscribers.

I’m intrigued that in this section Google seems to suggest that their main way of determining the popularity of a blog is the number of feed subscribers. This is an acknowledgement that a subscription to a blog feed is a much clearer indicator of a reader’s commitment to your blog than inbound traffic, which can be manipulated in all sorts of (e.g. black hat) ways.

However, the really important question to ask here is: How does Google know how many people are subscribed to your feed? Answer: Google Reader, the most popular feedreader at the moment, with a (loosely) estimated 30%+ share or the newsreader market. With this kind of marketshare, Google has 100% accurate data on what feeds 30% of people are subscribed to, and can make a very accurate “educated guess” on the other 70%. It’s an enviable and powerful position to hold.

So for starters — thanks to Reader — Google has a very accurate read on how many people are subscribed to your blog feed. But beyond just subscriber numbers, Google is using Reader to analyze the clicking and reading behaviour of feed subscribers. Google doesn’t just know if I’m subscribed to your blog feed; Google knows how often I actually show up to read your posts, when, where and how often I click through to your site, and so forth. And again, Google can make accurate extrapolations from how people interact with your feed on Reader, to how users of other newsreaders are doing the same.

And all this to derive a popularity rating of your blog and individual posts!

It makes me wonder: if Google sees themselves first and foremost as a search company, then Google Reader may exist, in their minds, first and foremost to measure feed readership accurately and thus derive an accurate quality score for Blogsearch… not (just) to give you and me another funky web-based newsreader to use. Think about it.

Clickety Click Click

[0039] An implied popularity may be identified for the blog document. This implied popularity may be identified by, for example, examining the click stream of search results. For example, if a certain blog document is clicked more than other blog documents when the blog document appears in result sets, this may be an indication that the blog document is popular and, thus, a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document.

Another indicator of the popularity of your blog (and of individual posts) is gleaned from a study of how people click on Google’s search results. For sure, Google records these outbound clicks, and somehow rewards the blogs that get the most clicks. Google will be looking for a lower-ranked blog post on a given page of search results that keeps getting more clicks than a higher-ranked listing. To Google, this would suggest that they need to honour the lower-ranked blog with a higher position in the search results, given that it’s getting more of the clicks.

Of course, the important question to ask here is: What can I do to increase the likelihood that a searcher will click on my link when it appears on a page of Google search results? The answer has been well covered, and has to do with search engine optimization (SEO) techniques related to your blog post’s title and the snippet Google displays under the title of your listing in the search results.

Google’s Verdict: Blogrolls Matter

The Google Blogsearch patent application includes a full three paragraphs dedicated to blogrolls and the significance Google ascribes to them in determining the quality of a blog. So we better not miss this:

[0040] The existence of the blog document in blogrolls may be a positive indication of the quality of the blog document. It will be appreciated that blog documents often contain not only recent entries (i.e., posts), but also “blogrolls,” which are a dense collection of links to external sites (usually other blogs) in which the author/blogger is interested. A blogroll link to a blog document is an indication of popularity of that blog document, so aggregated blogroll links to a blog document can be counted and used to infer magnitude of popularity for the blog document.

Google counts how many other blogs’ blogrolls include a link to your blog, and assigns your blog a score accordingly. This implies that Google knows about blogrolls and respects the fact that bloggers use them to indicate respect/trust/honour for/to other blogs. Blogrolls matter.

[0041] The existence of the blog document in a high quality blogroll may be a positive indication of the quality of the blog document. A high quality blogroll is a blogroll that links to well-known or trusted bloggers. Therefore, a high quality blogroll that also links to the blog document is a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document.

If your humble C-list blog is listed on someone else’s blogroll that otherwise contains only A-list blog links… you’re going to get lots of lovin’ from Google! That’s the point of this paragraph, anyway: Google looks at the kind of company your link keeps on blogrolls.

[0042] Simlarly, the existence of the blog document in a blogroll of a well-known or trusted blogger may also be a positive indication of the quality of the blog document. In this situation, it is assumed that the well-known or trusted blogger would not link to a spamming blogger.

If you’re on Scoble’s blogroll, Google assumes you’re a) not a spam site and b) immediately worthy of respect… Scoble said so.

The critical question here is obvious: How can I get a link to my blog on more and better blogrolls? And again, the answers are many and varied but (I think) all come down to one key point: you have to earn a place on someone’s blogroll… with good content and consistency. Sure, you’ll get a few blogroll links from buddies and work associates perhaps, but if you want an ever growing number of blogroll links, you need to endear yourself to people you’ve never met, who have grown into committed readers over time, and will (perhaps) reward you with a blogroll link, just coz they want to.

Social Bookmarking is Good for Your Blog Rank!

[0043] Tagging of the blog document may be a positive indication of the quality of the blog document. Some existing sites allow users to add “tags” to (i.e., to “categorize”) a blog document. These custom categorizations are an indicator that an individual has evaluated the content of the blog document and determined that one or more categories appropriately describe its content, and as such are a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document.

The shift away from local/desktop URL bookmarking to online services like Technorati, del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, ma.gnolia, reddit (and a ton of others) has created an entirely new “social” experience of shared bookmarks, affinity/interest groups and voting systems (like Digg). And for Google and other search engines, this has meant the ability to compare on-page and link-text keyword analysis with a new third factor: tagging.

So now there are three ways Google can do the keyword analysis to work out what your page is about (and rank you accordingly): a) on-page factors, b) inbound link-text, and c) tagging/categorization on social bookmarking sites. And Google respects tagging because it reflects people’s idea of what you’re blog (or post) is about.

Further, I’m guessing Google is very sophisticated in how they analyze the content of social bookmarking sites. (I bet they have a bot and analytical apparatus purpose-built for this purpose.) Rest assured they factor in the number of times a given post of yours has been bookmarked, and how frequently a given tag is used.

Here, the important question for fellow bloggers is: How can I get my blog posts properly and extensively tagged across the verious social bookmarking sites?

The terms Social Media Optimization (SMO) has been coined to, in part, encompass the various answers to this question. Rohit Bhargava is credited with coining this term and it was he who first suggested a number of rules or goals for SMO. I suggest you start there.

My personal challenge to you would be to see this SMO thing as an exercise in establishing and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships. It’s in the mutuality of these online friendships that people bookmark, tag, vote for and in other ways express support of each other’s blogging efforts. But that’s subject deserves a post of its own.

(Note: it would be remiss of me not to make one more point on tagging: tag your post content properly. That’s the love Technorati, in particular, is looking for. When people bookmark your site to, say del.icio.us, they tag as they see fit. When you tag your own post content, your get the chance to cover all the bases you want covered. So get it right!)

Is Google Reading Your Mail?!

Read this carefully:

[0044] References to the blog document by other sources may be a positive indication of the quality of the blog document. For example, content of emails or chat transcripts can contain URLs of blog documents. Email or chat discussions that include references to the blog document is a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?! Google has a massively popular hosted email service - GMail. They also have Google Talk, a chat service. You probably knew that. But did you know Google has intentions of crawling the content of your GMail emails and Google Talk chat sessions?! Now, I don’t know if they actually do that or not, and I haven’t gone hunting thru their terms of service seeking clarity, but their stated aim is clear: to find URLs in two key forms of personal online communications (email and chats), and to use these discoveries to further rank blogs and blog posts.

I have to say it makes perfect sense. Why? Because Google is looking to build a more and more accurate profile of your and my blog. And to do this Google wants to see corroborating evidence of popularity across as many different “media” as possible: web pages, blog posts, search results click patterns, blogrolls, social bookmarking services, and now email and chat session content. Wow… that’s called being thorough.

(Note: Google will no doubt also be analyzing chat content from other services where the “transcripts” are indexed. Twitter immediately comes to mind, here.)

So what’s the big question to be asking? I think it’s this: What can I do as a blog author to ensure that my posts are being linked to, in email and chat conversations? And my answer remains the same: consistently write compelling (sometimes controversial) content that people will want to point others to. You just can’t get past this one… you need your own high-quality content pumped out on a regular basis.

Some Concluding Questions

I’ve quoted just a few paragraphs from a much longer (and largely boring) patent application for a product that ended up being called Google Blogsearch. Reading through the bits of the application that made any sense to my non-legal mind, and comparing that to what I know of Google Blogsearch, I was left with a few questions I thought I’d bring to the ProBlogger community:

  1. Does it make sense to have Blogsearch separate from the main Google search engine? I’m not sure about that, but in dedicating a unique search service to blog content, Google is telling us that in some sense it’s a different kind of content with a different indexing algorithm applied to it.
  2. As Google Blogsearch gains in popularity, will new (or adjusted) SEO strategies emerge along with it? Is Blogsearch different enough to warrant different strategies? How different are the search results compared to the same query in the main Google search engine?
  3. How many people actually use Google Blogsearch (http://blogsearch.google.com)? I haven’t seen any data out there on the popularity of that service.
  4. Do you use it? Why? What do you like about it? Anything you don’t like about it?
  5. How do you find Google Blogsearch compares with Technorati? What are the major differences you have observed in their search results? Do you have a preference?

Enjoy this post? Get more like it by subscribing to our RSS feed.

Share This

Buy ProBlogger the Book

96 Responses to “How Google Blogsearch ranks your Posts… In their own words!”

  • Brent Hodgson

    April 18th, 2007 11:30 am

    Interesting stuff.

    Raises some questions for how to promote your blog into the future.
    No doubt it’s going to get harder for sploggers to get ahead too.

  • ilker

    April 18th, 2007 11:34 am

    1. Does it make sense to have Blogsearch separate from the main Google search engine?

    - Both Yes and No. Yes because Google searches are getting too much SEO and therefore “low quality” results. No because if it I’m wrong then why re-invent it if it works. Kind of contradictory of Google “the all knowing”.

    2. As Google Blogsearch gains in popularity, will new (or adjusted) SEO strategies emerge along with it? Is Blogsearch different enough to warrant different strategies? How different are the search results compared to the same query in the main Google search engine?

    - Yes (first question).
    - No (second question).
    - I need to find out (third question).

    3. How many people actually use Google Blogsearch (http://blogsearch.google.com)?

    - I don’t because Google search should, in theory, be enough.

    4. Do you use it? Why? What do you like about it? Anything you don’t like about it?

    - No.
    - No need as above.
    - No comments.

    5. How do you find Google Blogsearch compares with Technorati? What are the major differences you have observed in their search results? Do you have a preference?

    - What is Technorati?

  • Rehuel

    April 18th, 2007 11:58 am

    1. For those who look for information in blogs, yes, this may make sense. Searching rehuel on google gives a lot of other, non-blog related results. While blog search only filters results from blogs.

    2. One thing is for sure: Indexing is different on both sites. If I search rehuel on google, I get my blog at http://www.rehuel.com on top. If I search rehuel on BS, There is no link to my blog. However, when I search for “paypal vs moneybookers” my post in my blog is mentioned as 4th result.

    3. The only way I knew blogsearch was used was when I saw in my stats that poeple found my blog via BS. I don’t know anyone who uses BS.

    4. No I don’t

    5. On Technocrati, I can see more information about the blogs in the results. You can see how many other blogs link to that blog. There is a link to the Technocrati page of that specific search result, which gives a lot more information about the blog (how many links, rank, tags, most recent posts, favorited by, etc). So a lot more information then Blogsearch.

  • Wendy Piersall

    April 18th, 2007 12:09 pm

    P.H.E.N.O.M.E.N.A.L post, Alister! I don’t think I’ve EVER read a post this long from start to finish. Gawd, this must have taken you forever to write it, too!! :)

  • Meg

    April 18th, 2007 12:51 pm

    Hi Alister

    A very interesting post, and thought provoking. In response to your questions,

    1. I like the idea of a separate blog search, because the results are more focussed, current and fewer (and can be sorted by recency). Although I do notice that posts are very quickly finding their way (high) into the ranks of the main search engine.

    2. (undecided about the first 2) but I think the results are quite different, as many of the main search results are on aged domains.

    3/4 Frequently - particularly for topical info. I like being able to sort by date or relevancy. What I don’t like (in contrast to google.com.au) is the ability to find Australia specific posts - gnoos.com.au et al. do a much better job at that

    5 I don’t frequently use Technorati as a general blog search, I find it returns too many irrelevant results - Google blogsearch allows you to be much more targetted. Of course Technorati is really useful for other purposes.

    Thanks!

  • Matthew Bredel

    April 18th, 2007 1:05 pm

    Great, GREAT post! This has gotten me thinking a lot more about how I am currently managing my blog. The blogroll stuff is very new to me, and I plan to take this to heart a little bit more. Still, this affirms that both on-page and in-bound linking are still important (as well as who links to you as well). The monitoring of emails and chats sounds pretty invasive (but a rather interesting and valid way to measure true quality). I hope this does not promote more spam emails or even crazier, spam chatters! cheers…matt

  • Shaun Carter

    April 18th, 2007 1:31 pm

    Great Post!

    I’ve always been somewhat skeptical of Google scanning e-mails to generate Adsense content along the top and sides of the page, but now they are admitting to scanning e-mails for links and use that for ranking purposes.

    I am wondering then what the impact would be on a blog’s ranking by utilizing safelist submissions and perhaps even Spam. The latter would probably have a negative impact on ranking - but this is something to give some thought to.

  • The Geek

    April 18th, 2007 1:38 pm

    This is really a great article.

    I’ve found that Technorati is more or less worthless for most blogs, unless it’s a blog about blogging. I only use it to figure out what my current rank is.

  • Tony Kummer

    April 18th, 2007 1:39 pm

    So Google really does know everything.

    Someone should make a T-shirt about that.

  • Eric F.

    April 18th, 2007 2:18 pm

    Nice to see you filling in over here, Alister.

    I use Blogsearch fairly often. Mostly I use it when I’m writing something and want to link to other bloggers who have written about the same thing recently. I occasionally use Technorati for the same thing. I find that there are a lot of diary-type Livejournal results to wade through on both, but that’s to be expected.

    Finding recent (last couple of hours) posts in Google’s main index is pretty rare, in my experience.

    As far as inbound traffic from Blogsearch and Technorati are concerned, it’s pretty rare, though topical content does not do too badly. I’m not one of the higher ranking sites, which is obviously a factor.

  • Kumiko

    April 18th, 2007 2:35 pm

    Interesting post - particularly about the ‘big brother’ aspect of Google. Their plan to acquire DoubleClick adds to this suspicion as DoubleClick is one of the biggest profilers of web user behavior. If you think they’ve got data-collection capabilities now, wait until they’ve got DoubleClick!

    You may find this post relevant:
    http://kumikosuzuki.blogspot.com/2007/04/google-adsense-just-went-turbo-or-big.html

    Kumiko

  • Nadav Samet

    April 18th, 2007 3:00 pm

    How do you do rel=nofollow in GTalk ? I don’t want my chats to leak pagerank :)

  • Newspapergrl on Internet Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, etc.

    April 18th, 2007 3:09 pm

    […] read this amazing blog post about how Google’s Blogsearch ranks blogs. It’s featured on Problogger but written by Alister Cameron. I haven’t read Cameron’s blog before but I’m […]

  • James

    April 18th, 2007 3:28 pm

    I’ve been waiting for someone to start explaining the patents. Thanks, it’s a start.

  • How Google Blogsearch ranks weblog posts . . . | BloodhoundBlog: National real estate marketing and technology weblog | There's always something to howl about...

    April 18th, 2007 4:29 pm

    […] ProBlogger. Long, detailed post, but this stands out: Far from being a bad thing, blogrolling matters a lot. No telling how Blogsearch affects the main search engine, but it’s reasonable to surmise that they at least confer with each other. […]

  • Andy Beard

    April 18th, 2007 5:13 pm

    It is my opinion that by “tagging” Google only mean using rel=”tag” and similar constructs, thus categories are counted as tags as are Blogger labels.
    My content rarely gets Diggs, but I will most likely outrank this post on the subject of “Blogsearch” within a few days. (at least in Blogsearch)

    Blogrolls are a very minor factor from my estimates, and overall are extremely nasty for bloggers who aren’t aware of how much Google Juice they lose from duplicate content pages by giving people sitewide links.
    All the major search engines have said in the past they discount the value of sitewide links in sidebars. Blogrolls are just link. Link to people in your content if you like what they write.

    Blogsearch results do have a factor on the the main Google SERPs - just because they have patented this for blog search doesn’t mean some of the same factors for the main index.

  • neelkanth

    April 18th, 2007 6:16 pm

    Exhaustive details are worth going through. But what about the summerised statistics on number of readers, views, clicks on individual blogs/posts which is a normal anxiety of every blogger? If such statistics is made available to the bloggers, this certainly adds to the popularity of blogging with Googles.

  • Alister Cameron // Blogologist

    April 18th, 2007 6:39 pm

    @Wendy - thanks for the high praise!! I’m chuffed :)

    @Shaun - I’d be careful to say that this is an admission by Google that they’re scanning emails… it’s a “suggestion”… If Matt Cutts is reading this, I’d love him to add his insight (*hint*)!

    @Eric - you’re right that the main index doesn’t carry much “fresh” (i.e. hours-old) content, but interestingly, news.google.com does, which begs the question: how does Google decide when a blog is a news source, and therefore add that content to Google News?! The Huffington Post is a highly-ranked politics blog, for example. Should its content feature in Google News? Should mine and yours? How does Google make that call?!?! That’s an interesting aside, anyway.

    @Kumiko - what does Google *gain* that they didn’t already have with adsense/adwords, do you think? Curious.

    @Nadav - you don’t!

    @Andy - for the benefit of readers here I will disclose that you and I have exchanged emails about this, and I for one would love your more detailed response to the patent and my interpretations, because I know readers here will benefit greatly from your obvious expertise in these matters… so consider yourself “tagged”!

  • Matt Jones

    April 18th, 2007 6:46 pm

    I don’t know whether to be encouraged or disheartened by that! Overall it results in a much fairer system but getting to e.g. the front page of Digg is helped massivly by already having lots of readers.

  • Kumiko

    April 18th, 2007 7:19 pm

    With the DoubleClick acquisition, Google gains two things:

    Firstly, they’ve gained access to a DoubleClick’s existing customer base on corporate sites. Major sites like AOL, MySpace and the Wall Street Journal have their ads served by DoubleClick. These ads are obviously in a different market to Adsense, but now Google has gained access to this ‘corporate’ advertising space. Although I strongly doubt it, it would be possible in theory for the everday Adwords publisher to advertise in the Wall Street Journal!

    Secondly, and most ‘big-brother’ish is they’ve gained access to DoubleClick’s ad-monitoring technology and massive dataset on web use and advertising effectiveness. DoubleClick tracks such things as how long users view ads, how often they’ve seen the same ad and even the time of day the ad was viewed. Combine this with Adsense and it’s effectiveness steps up a notch.

    For example, I often see ads for John Chow’s site on Problogger. I clicked on it the first time and that’s how I discovered John’s site. When I see a John Chow ad now it’s a waste of advertising space as I already know about the site and visit it regularly. With DoubleClick’s tracking technology, they’d know I’ve already clicked a John Chow ad and would display a different ad instead - one that I haven’t seen and would be more likely to click.

    Better advertising effectiveness = more clicks = more money for Google.

    It’s also a win for the user as we won’t be displayed the same ads over and over again.

    If anybody doubts DoubleClick’s reach, I encourage them to check their cookies folder - there’s a good chance they’ll find one from DoubleClick!

    Kumiko

  • Barbra Sundquist

    April 18th, 2007 7:34 pm

    loved this post - thank you for doing all that research and analysis on our behalf

  • Moritz

    April 18th, 2007 8:58 pm

    Concerning No. 3: Most visitors that use Google Blogsearch to find my blog are other bloggers looking for different opinions on a topic, many of them link me in their own blog.
    Most “normal” users are just interested in informations or interesting articles, and don’t care if they find them on blogs, forums or static pages.

    Anyway, great (and somehow disturbing) article.

  • Blog News Watch » Blog Archive » Wednesday Roundup - April 18, 2007

    April 18th, 2007 9:16 pm

    […] Rowse at Problogger takes on Google’s Blogsearch, and tells us - in Google’s own words - how they do that voodoo they […]

  • Metablogging.gr » Πως το Google Blogsearch κατατάσει τα ποστ σας!

    April 18th, 2007 9:33 pm

    […] Alister Cameron (εδώ το μπλογ του) δημοσιεύει σήμερα ένα ποστ στο Problogger.com με τα ‘ευρήματά του’  σχετικά με τον αλγόριθμο […]

  • RobertoHerrero.net: Como puede ordenar Blogsearch de Google sus resultados

    April 18th, 2007 10:02 pm

    […] un interesante post (en inglés) publicado por Problogger y escrito por Alister Cameron. Así, en How Google Blogsearch ranks your Posts… In their own words! podemos ver un análisis de una de las últimas patentes de Google, relativa a la elaboración de […]

  • Toon Van Acker

    April 18th, 2007 10:13 pm

    I’m sorry, but in my opinion this whole article reeks of sensationalism and paranoia…

  • antonio

    April 18th, 2007 10:32 pm

    And let’s not forget Google analytics. Also telling Google who visits the blog, who returns to the blog and at which rate, from where and so on…

    Very interesting article!

  • Jack

    April 18th, 2007 10:41 pm

    So, Google is now monitoring your personal search history, your chats, your emails, and, possibly, your browsing behaviour via the toolbar.

    Call me paranoid, but what happens with your information when they receive a subpoena?

  • Cucirca

    April 18th, 2007 10:55 pm

    Great article
    Let’s hope that “Google Reading Your Mail” thing is just a bad interpretation.

  • theFuzzyWarble » Blog Archive » Is Google reading your mail?

    April 18th, 2007 10:56 pm

    […] Rowse, over at ProBlogger has posted an interesting article regarding Google, their system for ranking blogs and the dirty […]

  • blackroses » Is Google Reading Your Email to Determine Blog Popularity?

    April 18th, 2007 11:03 pm

    […] blog post popularity. It’s a bit creepy and has “Big Brother” written all over it.read more | digg story […]

  • Agatha

    April 18th, 2007 11:13 pm

    3. Yes, I use Google Blogsearch occasionally, when looking for posts about things going on in the blogging world - reactions to certain controversial posts and such.

    What I would like to know is whether blog carnivals help or hurt your ranking. Since bloggers gather to write about the same topic, the links in the carnival should probably be considered relevant and trustworthy. On the other hand, if all participants post the same summary to their blogs it could be interpreted as spam, I suppose?

  • Stephane Dion

    April 18th, 2007 11:49 pm

    This post is very useful, but I’m suprised that Google’s patent didn’t talk about reader’s comments on a blog document.

    Sure the rss readers must mean something to google, any kind of information that is “reliable” must mean gold to Google. But it’s not because the rss feed as a lot of subscribers that people are interacting with a blog. Google must certainly evaluate the comments posted on a blog. Factors like , quantity, quality, frequency, lenght or how related to the post are (I think…) probably used to rank a blog.

  • Liz

    April 18th, 2007 11:58 pm

    Based on how section [0044] is written, I wonder if that means they track all the URLs in your email and chat or only those that people click on. Since they base their results on relevance it would only be logical if they counted those that people use and disregard the millions of spam links.

  • Liz

    April 19th, 2007 12:00 am

    Based on how section [0044] is written I wonder if that means they track all the URLs in your email or chat or only those that people click on. Since they base their results on relevance it would only be logical if they counted those that people use and disregard the millions of spam links.

  • Stephane Dion

    April 19th, 2007 12:06 am

    I looked into the my rss’ readers. Depending on the blog, I get between 16% to 20% of the people that are Google Reader subscribers. This would mean that my blogs are largerly penalize by the Google algo. because they assume they have a larger market size (30%).

    The solution would be to move from feedburner and to push as hard as I can my readers to use the Google Reader. But then again, Google can detect that and penalize me…

    Could they have a agreement with feedburner to get more detailed information on RSS subscribers?

  • Vern from Blog Simply

    April 19th, 2007 12:49 am

    1. It doesn’t make sense to have blogsearch separate. People are searching for information - blogs and traditional sites have it - why separate them? Blogs have more recent info probably - dynamic info. But, separate them into two searches? No. Results of searches on one engine should be in 2 columns - one pertaining to traditional sites and one for blogs. Let user choose.
    2. Good questions - no answers here!
    3. How many people actually use Google Blogsearch? I’ve not seen stats on that.
    4. Do you use it? I have used it only out of curiousity where my blogs are appearing and to find relevant articles to reference in my blog posts. I like it fine.
    5. How do you find Google Blogsearch compares with Technorati? I don’t use Techno search.

    It’s nice to know Google is looking at emails and chats - a good reminder for all of us that if Google is looking there, others are looking there. When you mention something that might be innocuous it could turn into something down the line. I’m paranoid - yes, but I used to think chats and emails were private. We CAN’T think that way anymore!

  • Joshua Dorkin

    April 19th, 2007 1:59 am

    WOW! That was a remarkable post. It really is somewhat scary to think how much Google knows. We all talk about the government spying on us with illegal wiretaps . . . all the while, Google is doing it legally.

  • nakedjonny

    April 19th, 2007 2:03 am

    lol, my blog is doomed

  • nemo

    April 19th, 2007 2:04 am

    One thing you’ve missed:all of this data is aggregated. I hardly consider it a breach of privacy when they are just gathering statistics about all users. Everyone knows that Google’s software reads email, for example, to deliver targeted ads. Google is about the one company I do trust to put individual data under lock and key so that even their employees have no access to personal information. They develop things like Map/Reduce to easily come up with aggregate statistics in a verifiable manner.

  • Chris Butterworth

    April 19th, 2007 2:49 am

    FANTASTIC post! I’ve read a lot of material over the last six months (since I’ve been blogging); this is far and away the most comprehensive and analytical explanation I have seen. Funny, though, that the bottom line is the same as always… Content is king.

  • pr0xy k1ll3r

    April 19th, 2007 3:22 am

    OMG!!! Big brother , big brother!!!

    Get a grip!
    If you don’t want your email to be read don’t put it on a public domain and this search is done by bots and is fully automated. How do you think spam filters work??

  • Chris Hotz » Blog Archive » Why You Should Use Google: Everything Google

    April 19th, 2007 3:31 am

    […] I just read a great article on ProBlogger about a new patent for Google BlogSearch.  I highly suggest reading it.  […]

  • Is Google Reading Your Email to Determine Blog Popularity? - News Doggy - Fetched News

    April 19th, 2007 4:11 am

    […] blog post popularity. It’s a bit creepy and has “Big Brother” written all over it.read more | digg […]

  • Make Money Online Pros » Blog Archive » Money Reads From The Pros

    April 19th, 2007 5:16 am

    […] How Google BlogSearch Ranks Your Posts - This is a super interesting article that teaches us Google’s philosophy behind ranking blogposts. It actually shows Google patent application which shows their ideology behind their system. […]

  • Eric F.

    April 19th, 2007 5:37 am

    @ Alister - re how they decide who gets listed in Google News and who doesn’t: I actually submitted my site for consideration - naively, perhaps - and received a response from Google that they don’t accept sites that are written by only one person.

    I have seen the odd single-person site show up in Google News, though, so maybe there’s a criterion that supersedes the “multiple writers” guideline?

  • How Blog Search ranks posts « Brian Heys Writes

    April 19th, 2007 5:57 am

    […] Following on from my earlier post about Google Blog Search today, I thought I’d link to a fascinating article on Problogger.net, where Google’s patent for Blog Search is picked apart to show us exactly how Google […]

  •   Google Blogsearch Revealed: Learn the Secrets Behind Google’s Blogging Search Engine by TimeForBlogging

    April 19th, 2007 6:19 am

    […] assignment for Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger, Alister Cameron writes an incredible post detailing how Google Blogsearch ranks your blog posts. Using the Google Blogsearch patent application, Alister reveals some incredible information about […]

  • What is Googgle Really Up To? at SuccessCREEations by Chris Cree

    April 19th, 2007 6:25 am

    […] What is Googgle Really Up To? By Chris There is a brilliant new guest post up over at ProBlogger.net by Alister Cameron titled How Google Blogsearch ranks your Posts… In their own words! […]

  • links for 2007-04-18 « LamaZone

    April 19th, 2007 7:26 am

    […] How Google Blogsearch ranks your Posts… In their own words! by problogger (tags: blogs pagerank) […]

  • Inner workings of Google Blogsearch through its patent application

    April 19th, 2007 7:56 am

    […] Rowse has posted an excellent analysis on the inner workings of the Google Blogsearch made available through their patent application in September 2005. As Darren mentions, the […]

  • Desvendando o Google Blogsearch II « PubADdict

    April 19th, 2007 8:05 am

    […] classifica os blogs para as pesquisas efectuadas no Blogsearch. Deixo agora aqui referência para este artigo da autoria de Alister Cameron colocando no Problogger, onde é desvendanda com mais detalhe a patente Google sobre pesquisa de […]

  • Exploring Blogosphere

    April 19th, 2007 8:25 am

    – How many people actually use Google Blogsearch?

    Sometimes I used Google Blogsearch to search what bloggers are talking about at the moment; also, I have some visitors are from GoogleBlogsearch. :-)

  • Optimising your blog for Google Blogsearch | Simon Wakeman

    April 19th, 2007 8:39 am

    […] Cameron has a very interesting post on ProBlogger about how Google Blogsearch indexes your blog […]

  • raena.net » links for 2007-04-18

    April 19th, 2007 9:20 am

    […] How Google Blogsearch ranks your Posts… In their own words! freaky (tags: security privacy) […]

  • mblair

    April 19th, 2007 11:27 am

    Alister — this was really a great post. Excellent breakdown. I think Google is putting all the pieces together (conversation monitoring, etc) before they construct what will probably be the definitive “primary” social network that will tie all of this together. This analysis of their blogsearch goes along way to show how sensitive they are to social media metrics.

  • Elaine

    April 19th, 2007 12:02 pm

    Does it make sense to have Blogsearch separate from the main Google search engine?
    I don’t think so. Blogware is becoming a standard content management system these days. Almost every site keeping up with the times has a feed, too. And these methods sound like effective methods to improve the search, why not use them on regular sites?

    As Google Blogsearch gains in popularity, will new (or adjusted) SEO strategies emerge along with it?
    Of course. SEO strategies will always adjust to match the search and ranking systems.

    Is Blogsearch different enough to warrant different strategies?
    Maybe a few different strategies, but none of these things in particular are things that can’t be used to search other sites.

    How different are the search results compared to the same query in the main Google search engine?
    Different. I like being able to narrow the results for different time periods. For example, right now if you search “menu foods” you will find page after page on the pet food recall. That’s valid, that’s great. But what if I want to find out about something Menu Foods did a few years ago? Or what if I’m just looking for stuff on menus and foods for my restaurant?

    Narrowing by date is SOOOO effective to help find these types of things. I’m continually frustrated with Google regular search when it pops up pages that are four years old and haven’t been updated or when Technorati blog search can’t find anything over a minute old. When I want to search, I want to search. I want to dig, to hunt and to find.

    How many people actually use Google Blogsearch (http://blogsearch.google.com)?
    I wonder. I use it.

    Do you use it? Why?
    Yup. Because I like to try new things and because I think it’s better than Technorati. Technorati excludes blogs for weird reasons. And they freely admit they’re a media company, not a tech company, so they really don’t care if their algorithm sucks.

    What do you like about it?
    Advanced search features. I want even more of them.

    Anything you don’t like about it?
    I don’t really like the way it works. And I don’t like how they take a certain amount of characters regardless of the post size. I think it should be a percentage of the post, not a specific number of characters.

    How do you find Google Blogsearch compares with Technorati?
    I like Google better. But I use both depending on what I’m looking for.

  • Ronald Ashri

    April 19th, 2007 5:02 pm

    er… isn’t that what google adwords do - they read the words in our e-mail and post relevant ads next to them. From that to just scanning for URLs is a small step so on the privacy bit I wouldn’t be that suprised!

  • פיצה

    April 19th, 2007 5:33 pm

    Interesting.
    The point regarding click counts = popularity. Perhaps google are seeing the future where their upcoming competitors (the wiki foundation with their new search engine based on users input) might become a threat. A pure mathematical algorithm is no longer enough. The results must now adjust with the users browsing habits and trends.

    I personally use blogsearch with great results. Lets see what the future holds for it.

    Great article, thanks for the education.

  • Sreejith

    April 20th, 2007 12:17 am

    Well, Darren, in my case, I don’t always use Google Blog Search or in a harsher tone, I don’t use it at all. One of the reasons is that when I’m looking for some content, I don’t want to get my results restricted to blogs.

    And, Google has gone wrong with separating it from the main search engine. On to your second question, I think such a thing called BEO(Blog Engine Optimization) would evolve.

    About Technorati and Google Blog Search, it all goes to what I said first. I never use these services to search for content because I don’t want to get my results restricted to just blogs.

  • Balazs Balint

    April 20th, 2007 2:34 am

    Thank you for the post. This is the first time I used Google Blogsearch. The results are different. As I see it gives result in two ways. Related blogs give nearly the same result you find in Google. But the resulted post are really different from what you can get from Google. It seems to be good. In Google Icould searh for only relevant blogs. Because a mainly the two or three year old posts had the highest PageRank, so I normally find an old post instead of the recent ones. Now Google Blogsearch seems to be better- you can find recent posts on first places.
    But I do not know whether it will be easier to drive great traffic to a blog. I think no. I belive, that great writing skills, and great efforts will give the desired results!

  • Arslanlar Şehri » Google Blogsearch nasıl işliyor, ne işe yarıyor ?

    April 20th, 2007 3:39 am

    […] Rowse‘nin sitesinde Alister Cameron adlı konuk yazar bir girdi hazırlarmış. Girdi’de Google’un blog arama motor patentini incelemiş ve Google’un hangi […]

  • Is Google reading your mail to improve ranking? » Bogle’s Blog

    April 20th, 2007 4:21 am

    […] article on Problogger describes a recent Google blogsearch patent filing: Is Google Reading Your […]

  • All in a days work…

    April 20th, 2007 6:51 am

    […] Determining a Quality Score for a Blog Document - the main way: feed subscribers a popularity (implied or not) of the blog document, existence of the document in blogrolls (high quality or not), tagging of the blog document, references to the blog document by other sources, and a pagerank of the blog document (tags: Blogging Popularity PageRank Ranking Google Google_Reader) […]

  • Ranking do Google pode vir a ser influenciado por citação em email? - dudu tomaselli

    April 20th, 2007 11:22 am

    […] Mas até agora eu não tinha ouvido falar que essa indexação do conteúdo dos emails pudesse ser utilizada para ajudar a formar o ranking das buscas do Google. E foi essa possibilidade que foi levantada em um texto de ontem (18/04) do Problogger.net, chamado como o Google Blogsearch pontua seu post… pelas palavras dele. […]

  • I Will Follow!!! DO Follow - Life in the Fast Lane

    April 20th, 2007 4:45 pm

    […] to use my sidebar for this. Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has some very good advice on his post for Google’s Verdict: Blogrolls Matter. I’ve never been steered wrong by his advice yet; he uses only white hat SEO and […]

  • Odd bits | astrofish.net/xenon

    April 20th, 2007 8:22 pm

    […] useless data: Comes from the I told you so […]

  • Drainedge Link Tank · Today’s Links

    April 21st, 2007 2:13 am

    […] How Google Blogsearch ranks your Posts… In their own words! - ProBlogger […]

  • Friday Weed Time - 4/20/07 » TheMadHat

    April 21st, 2007 2:31 am

    […] * From Alister Cameron via problogger, here is another excellent algorithm type post on how Google Blogsearch ranks your drivel. […]

  • This Week In SEO - 4/20/07 - TheVanBlog

    April 21st, 2007 10:23 am

    […] How Google Blogsearch ranks your Posts… In their own words! […]

  • Ton Wesseling

    April 22nd, 2007 6:42 pm

    Awesome find. Makes sense to scan through Googles patents notes. Thanks for sharing. I’m curious what Google already uses and what they’re never going to use and most curious about what they already use but didn’t wrote down in this patent.

    You for sure restarted the “tell a friend by email about this” hype.

  • Earning Money Blog Reading Tips - 23 April 2007

    April 23rd, 2007 5:39 am

    […] Cameron wrote a very good guest post on Problogger about how Google Blogsearch ranks your posts. This may be a very boring post because it is lengthy but it did give me some useful […]

  • netvance

    April 23rd, 2007 7:00 pm

    Its also important how your subpages are named. So its best to use subpage names like netvance-software-entwicklung instead of netvance_software_entwicklung
    This gives a much higher ranking in the result lists.
    greetings from Wien (http://www.netvance.at)

  • Lead Optimize.com » Blog Archive » Google Considering More than You Think for Blog Page Rank

    April 24th, 2007 2:29 am

    […] is a great article from ProBlogger about some of the numerous things Google analyzes when indexing your blog. Aspects they might be […]

  • Rhea

    April 27th, 2007 4:09 am

    I use Google Blogsearch nearly every day. I am always searching for keywords on blogs that might be similar to mine so I can go and comment on them. Interesting to hear how it works.

  • Motorcycle Guy

    April 28th, 2007 11:04 am

    Wow these are really crazy and the crazy part is most of these can be manipulated.

  • Business Commando » Blog Archive » Les Avantages de Gmail !

    May 1st, 2007 12:17 am

    […] Bon je me doit quand meme de faire un lien vers ce post de blogger pro […]

  • » הידד לקרן הפנסיה של עובדי עיריית ניו יורק| הבלוג של יהונתן קלינגר |

    May 1st, 2007 3:42 am

    […] גוגל למרות שזו שומרת מידע אישי עלינו ואפילו למרות שזו קוראת את הדואר האלקטרוני שלנו בכדי לתת תוצאות חיפוש יו…. אבל האם אותם סטנדרטים גבוהים של אתיקה עומדים בעינם […]

  • Google Hell, Digg Revolt & Perfect Storm » Online Marketing Blog

    May 4th, 2007 1:23 am

    […] blog search ranking algorithm explained, I mean speculated, by Alister Cameron at […]

  • Google Hell, Digg Revolt & Perfect Storm | Internet Marketing Blog

    May 4th, 2007 7:33 am

    […] blog search ranking algorithm explained, I mean speculated, by Alister Cameron at […]

  • Sheriff

    May 4th, 2007 10:42 pm

    Currently the website is just a convenient place to post and collaborate on models used in fundamental equity research. Right now you can find versions of a LVLT model I am developing in the “Project” folder of that website.

  • McGee’s Musings : Blogrolls matter - do you want one here?

    May 4th, 2007 11:46 pm

    […] haven’t had a blogroll on my site in years. Turns out that’s a mistake. I’ll be working on remedying that in the next few […]

  • Balwant Rawat

    May 15th, 2007 10:50 pm

    Interesting article Darren. I tried various blog searching tools today - Icerocket, bloglines, Feedster, Google blog search and bloglines. As per my analysis, google blog search provided maximum number of results, many of them were quite relevant to my query.
    It seems that when it comes to searching - google has upper hand over its competitors. This is also confirmed by the huge number of patents Google is filing in the searching area.
    :-)

  • Tom

    May 16th, 2007 10:03 am

    I thought blogrolls were pointless. I really thought Google would consider such lists to simply be a form of link farming.

    Now I see I was mistaken.

    I’ll admit to being a little concerned about their mining of end user email, but then I never had the false sense of privacy I’m sure many have.

    Very interesting post,

  • alexander.kinnunen

    May 19th, 2007 3:52 am

    Fantastic post! Raises some really interesting questions, I guess only time will tell.

  • Skipper

    May 19th, 2007 7:00 am

    Three thoughts on this.

    Google’s ranking criteria have always struck me as being similar to the popularity contests that go on in high school lunch rooms — who’s in, who’s out, who’s cool, who’s not. It’s as useful and fair as a gossip mill. That type of juvenile ranking is a tough enough struggle even when you’re at the top. Now, everyone’s on this treadmill trying to appease the google-gods instead of writing good articles.

    The idea of scouring people’s emails to find out what they’re saying just seems prying and nosy. I realize email isn’t private, but I really don’t want to be part of their little plan to be the keepers of all the secrets of exactly what everyone is thinking. Who died and left them in charge, anyway?

    What Google is doing is sorting out the unpopular opinions and driving them to the obscurity of the bottom of the list. That’s NOT diversity.

  • Google To Buy Feedburner? The Real Reasons :: Unintentionally Blank

    May 20th, 2007 10:57 am

    […] Cameron, in a post for ProBlogger, asked, “How does Google know how many people are subscribed to your feed?” (See under the subtitle “A Key Indicator: Feed Readership.”) His answer was […]

  • The Poor College Kid » Earning Money Blog Reading Tips - 23 April 2007

    July 1st, 2007 8:52 am

    […] Cameron wrote a very good guest post on Problogger about how Google Blogsearch ranks your posts. This may be a very boring post because it is lengthy but it did give me some useful […]

  • VideoKarma

    July 19th, 2007 1:57 am

    Makes sense, as the 800 pound gorrilla of search gets better and smarter, we will see more and more pure and relevant search as a result.. driven by only one factor - Is it good for the visitor? So if this post is being crawled - Thanks g**gle !

  • "Blog Search Ranking Factors - Google's Algorithm" from SEO ROI

    July 19th, 2007 3:54 am

    I’m publishing a comprehensive review and summary of blogsearch, including my own analysis, and summary of this and Bill Slawski’s analysis (http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=541) over at SEO ROI. Thouhgt you might be interested in the wrap up.

  • noyb

    November 7th, 2007 9:56 pm

    Interesting read. we’ll see what effects these techniques have on blogsearch

  • Web 97

    January 1st, 2008 3:41 am

    Interesting read. Thx for digging the info out and sharing it.

  • Justin

    January 28th, 2008 9:33 am

    I use blogsearch it is good.

  • אלבום תמונות

    February 9th, 2008 9:16 am

    Never used blogsearch before as I wasn’t able to figure out why things pop out in the results there, I’ll try a few of your tips hoping it would work. Thanks.

  • Adam

    March 25th, 2008 5:56 pm

    I guess, blog search can not give you the kind of traffic you want. I use it mainly to find related blogs in a niche.

  • Fred Lancaster

    June 14th, 2008 7:08 am

    How can google go through gmail like this, isn’t that invasion of your privacy in some way? I would not want them sifting through my gmail emails… that’s personal stuff.

Leave a Reply