Ranking Signals of the Future: Where Engines Might Be Heading By Rand Fishkin

Where Engines Might Be Heading

Ranking Signals of the Future

#SMX @Randfish

Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz | @randfish | [email protected]

Ranking Signals of the Future A look at what inputs search engines may adopt in the future

and how it impacts the marketing we do today.

Find These Slides Online at:

bit.ly/futuresignals

#1 Usage Data of Pages and Sites

10,000 visits/day +50% growth last 6 months

3.7 pages/session 3 visits/unique user/month

6,000 visits/day -10% growth last 6 months

1.2 pages/session 1.4 visits/unique user/month

Maybe I should send searchers to the page w/

the greater visitor loyalty & engagement.

Patent, Analysis on SEO by the Sea

Ha!

This type of ranking input could be behind the strong performance of

popular brand sites on queries where classic SEO elements are

lacking

Poor keyword targeting, low relevance, few links, but the sites probably have stronger traffic/engagement than the competition.

Via Searchmetrics’ Ranking Factors

Click-Through-Rate showed a 0.67 correlation

This May Explain the High Correlation of CTR w/ Rankings

#2 Accuracy vs. Popularity of Information

Nailed It! Rank ‘em high, boys.

As Google’s research showed, PageRank and accuracy of

information have a poor correlation on the web.

By looking at multiple sets of data across sites &

pages, an algorithm could determine the consistency

of accuracy shown by a site.

Paper from Google Researchers, Analysis by NPR

Consistently accurate facts could raise a site’s rankings, especially in areas (like health) where

Google weights accuracy more heavily.

Less likely to rank. More likely to rank.

#3 Query Structure as an Anchor-Text-Like Signal

Many searchers using query structures in a particular fashion could connect brands and

modifiers to keywords

Looks familiar

Popular searches around a brand could indicate associations that

manifest in ranking inputs.

That ranking might be at partially, causal, rather than mere coincidence.

#4 Brands as Entities, Entities as Answers

More and more brands are becoming entries in Google’s Knowledge Graph

IMO, these brand dropdowns suggest an

implicit bias toward accumulating brand

associations and showing them off to searchers

In many competitive SERPs, there seems

to be a correlation between brand dropdowns and ranking higher.

Some brands get so tightly connected to keywords, they become nearly analogous

with the query

Suggest also shows us brand queries that earn strong connections to URLs

Even some generic queries bring back branded domain suggestions

an experiment!

Let’s try

Call Out Your Answer:

What site would you expect to see when you searched for this?

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

Weird.

Call Out Your Answer:

What site would you expect to see when you searched for this?

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

Call Out Your Answer:

What site would you expect to see when you searched for this?

Maybe?

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

Maybe?

Call Out Your Answer:

What site would you expect to see when you searched for this?

Maybe?

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

Best Way to Rank in 2018?

“Yup.” Find a way to be the first

on everyone’s mind.

#5 Tracing the Visit Path to an Answer

Problem-solving on the web often looks something like this:

Broad search Narrower search

Even narrower search

Website visit

Website visit Brand search

Social validation Highly-specific search

Type-in/direct visit Completion of Task

Google wants to do this:

Broad search

All the sites (or answers) you probably would have visited/sought along that path

Completion of Task

If Google sees that many people

who perform these types of queries:

Eventually end their queries on the topic after

visiting:

The Ramen Rater

They might use the clickstream data to help

rank that site higher, even if it doesn’t have

traditional ranking signals

They’re definitely getting and storing it.

Google was just granted an interesting patent that suggested a similar process

Patent Application from Google, Analysis by Bill Slawski

#6 Weighting Elements of User Experience

Patent Application from Google, Analysis on SEOByTheSea

Ever since Panda, Google’s been trying to surface not just quality

content, but “high quality websites.”

If they aren’t already doing it, Google’s at least thinking about how to measure UX

and rank sites that do it better, higher.

#7 Replacing Flawed Humans w/ Deep Learning Machines

Jeff Dean’s Slides on Deep Learning Are a Must Read for SEOs

Google’s Deep Learning system studied YouTube clips and eventually invented its own classification/

concept of “cats”

Replace YouTube with the Web and cats with any given search query, and it’s not hard to imagine Google creating a

deep learning ranking algorithm

Google knows there’s two, but based on my footprint, it biases to the one matching my behavior, past queries,

geography, etc.

In the future, even Google’s search quality engineers may have no idea

why something ranks or whether they’re using a particular factor in the

ranking algorithm.

The machine will simply ask “what algorithm produces results that searchers engage with

best?” then make it.

strange path… Google seems to be going down a

Total searchers, number of searchers, & searches per searcher are all going up

Via RKG’s Quarterly Digital Marketing Report

Is Google sacrificing ad impressions to make searchers happier?

Are they willing to take away queries that provide revenue?

These searches could have created revenue, but Google’s pre-empting w/ direct navigation to URLs

I am too.

Skeptical?

IMO, Google’s thinking long term. They want addicted searchers providing data about themselves so they can charge more per ad

unit.

Via Search Engine Land

Via RKG Report

Facebook has shown Google that more data about users yields more

dollars per impression and

click.

I think Google will chase better UX to almost any extent in order to keep searchers & get data, even at the cost of their existing model.

Almost unreal that Google

does this w/o AirBnB paying

for an ad.

Via Tom Anthony’s Post

Google will chase better UX to almost any extent in order to keep searchers & get data, even at the cost of their existing model

My Guess:

Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz | @randfish | [email protected]

bit.ly/futuresignals

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