“Who seeks, finds.” In this case, the popular saying goes like a glove for Google. There is no information that can resist the search engine giant, and when it rarely happens, the absence in question even generates suspicion.
To substantiate the trust we place in their crawls, in 1999 Google created the Page Rank algorithm: a scoring system that rates the authority of a page based on its content, influencing its positioning.
There are several factors that Google takes into account to perform these metrics, and they range from the number of visits to the page to its loading speed, through the value and quality of the content, the design, and the frequency of updates, among others. . So it is convenient to pay special attention to the state of all these elements if we want our website to win the favors of Google.
To make things easier, the internet giant has not hesitated to detail in its corporate blog the criteria it follows to measure the amount of content in its search results. We see it?
Google’s key elements to measure content quality
There are three key elements on which Google bases its metric of the quality of the content of web pages:
1- Create a ranking system that reflects the information based on how useful and reliable it is for people.
2- It launches search functions to directly access information issued by authorities or governmental entities or world organizations. This search focuses on data that is real and reliable for the users who make their queries.
3- It guarantees the quality and usefulness of the content displayed through its policies on what may appear in the search functions.
To be able to perform a quality-oriented classification, Google uses language compression systems capable of relating search words and concepts with analogous information. This is possible thanks to the application in search of BERT, the brand new open source neural network recently released by Google. BERT processes natural language more efficiently, making it easier to understand synonyms and spelling mistakes. But it’s not limited to top searches, BERT applies to featured snippets as well.
Another variable that makes it easier for search engines to understand the quality of content are the so-called “signals”, and they can be of various types. An example of a reliability signal on a topic would be the number of quality pages linked to a particular page. In addition to the signals, Google has more than 10,000 search quality evaluators: these are thousands of people who carry out millions of searches from which they rate the quality of the results obtained. The assessment of these scores is governed by the EAT parameters (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).
Expert reports and clarity of information
Another of Google’s actions to offer its users the most reliable and relevant information possible is to grant a higher score to those pages that prove their experience and authority. This applies especially to topics related to medicine, finance, or crisis situations, so if the information comes from institutions or government agencies, it will appear directly in the search results.
And as regards helping the user to understand complex topics in their searches, Google makes available tools that allow the online information to be intelligible for those who consult it, making it easier to find reliable sources on the subject that arouses interest. An example of such tools is fact check detection: labels assigned by publishers applying the ClaimReview schema and pointing to published fact checks.
There are also other general functions such as highlighting fragments, autocomplete, or the knowledge panels that appear to the right of the search results list.
In summary, Google has provided the necessary tools to facilitate user information searches based on quality, reliability, and organization.
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