Tech

Search Engines Use Authority, Trustworthiness, and Relevance To Determine Organic Search Rankings

What do we do when we needed information? For the past 20 years or more, we have been relying on search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc) when we need information that we didn’t already know. In recent years, we may have especially been relying on Google for giving us any answers. Unless we have much patience and could wait for the answers from our friends/connections, we would have left messages through social media sites (such as Facebook) or instant messengers (such as Whatsapp). As the internet and mobile technologies have been advancing in the past several years, Hong Kong people have also put much reliance on Google and Yahoo.

People has the belief that the answers that are returned on the first few pages of Google’s search engine results pages are authoritative and trustworthy, and they must be highly relevant to their specific questions. But how does a search engine (such as Google) evaluate authority of the content that is provided by a website? Experienced SEO consultant and SEO company in Hong Kong may have given you the right answers, even in reality Google would use a few hundred factors or signals in the evaluation of the authority, relevance, and trustworthiness of websites that are either for Hong Kong audience or global audience. The factors can be summarized into two main types that include relevance in content and external citation authority in links.

Let’s examine the inside mechanism of Google (or a typical search engine company). With a typical website, Google reads and analyzes the actual content and other features on a page (of a particular website). Google must then associate a relevant topic or a few relevant topics to the page. In the past, Google and all other search engines wouldn’t be able to do much more than just those listed above. But it is different nowadays (or in recent years). Google goes much more beyond the on-page assessment and is able to analyze the language on the page, the structure, and other features that are important for determining how far this particular page has covered/addressed a specific topic. Based on this information, Google is able to determine how useful the content on this particular page is for a typical visitor. There is also the location factor in it. Google knows whether a particular page is more suitable for a location/region such as Hong Kong or other places.

When Google has a great understanding of the topic and language of the web page, it adds the page to its Index, with authority, relevance, and trustworthiness. After all, Google has always been building the algorithms to help connecting people with authoritative sources of information for people’s questions and needs, whether the topic is in the physics category, or a home appliance (such as a washing machine). The complex algorithms are able to read, find, and ascertain the topicality of a particular web page. Eventually, the correct information is matched and returned for the search query (that users have entered into Google’s search box).