Secret Google Document Gives Guidelines

Everyone knows that Google has complex algorithms that it uses to help to assess the value of results to be returned in a search. What is not so widely known is that Google also employs a number of companies to provide manual reviews by their employees.

These reviewers are given a set of quality guidelines to help them to assess the search engine results pages (SERP) and the content of those guidelines has long been something that search engine optimization companies would like to know.

Of course, Google keeps the guides tightly controlled and does not publish them.  Intentionally.  But towards the end of last year a copy fell into the hands of an Internet marketer when it was inadvertently leaked in Google documents.  Of course, it was quickly taken down and the various sites that had published it were also asked to take it down and most, if not all of them, complied.

Unfortunately, the information in the guide was not some huge new revelation, but it did confirm that factors that many SEO practitioners had surmised were important were among the rules to be observed.

So what are some of the points that might be of value to real estate websites?

First, the intent of the search is broken down to 4 types:

1. Know queries - the searcher is looking for information.

2. Go queries - the searcher is looking for a particular page on the Internet.

3. Do queries - the searcher is looking for a place on the Internet where they can accomplish a goal, such as playing, buying, downloading, etc.

 4. Combination queries - when the searcher combines 2 or 3 of the above goals into one query.

If someone is looking to buy a product or service, then offering that should be the focus of the landing page, not just information.  Similarly, if the searcher is looking for information, a page that is just concerned with capturing name and address details is not highly relevant.

Secondly, relevance:

Search results have to be relevant to the query to rank well but now we have seen that Google uses 5 categories:

1. Vital
2. Useful
3. Relevant
4. Slightly relevant
5. Useless

1. Vital - would be when a page matches the query exactly.  For example a search for a brand name that returns the brand's home page.
2. Useful - would encompass informative sites and up-to-date news.
3. Relevant - should answer the search query with good quality content on a trustworthy website.
4. Slightly relevant - the subject may be on-topic but could be out-dated, duplicate content or of limited value.
5. Useless - these are pages that are somewhat relevant, but with poor quality content or limited information.

There is also a separate tag for "Spam".  That is reserved for pages that provide almost no information, or are full of links or adverts, or try to fools the search engine with "black hat" techniques.

Interestingly, the document contains instructions on duplicate content.  It says that if the copied content is well-presented and informative then it should be rated according to how useful it is to users.

The guidelines also contain information on geographic locations and local business searches but those are for another time.