Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hi, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: My name is Chris Pelette. I'm an editor here at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and with me I have
Speaker 1: writer Jonathan Stricklines. Hey there, um, and our question of
Speaker 1: today why is the Google algorithm so important? And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you all right, but first I guess we we
Speaker 1: just in case you don't know, we should tell you
Speaker 1: one algorithm is I know, I know, I had to
Speaker 1: look it up, Chris, Um. You know, it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those things. It's one of those words that you
Speaker 1: sort of know what it means. I know, it's a
Speaker 1: mathematical something or other that makes something happened in a
Speaker 1: certain way. And uh, okay, so I looked it up.
Speaker 1: I admit I looked it up, and it says that
Speaker 1: when I looked at Webster's that basically an algorithm is
Speaker 1: a pattern for doing this. So this is the pattern
Speaker 1: that Google is using to rank search results on It's
Speaker 1: on its page, right. Yes, this is a set of instructions,
Speaker 1: in this case, a computer algorithm, a set of instructions
Speaker 1: that tells the computer exactly how to bring back search
Speaker 1: engine results pages Those are also known as serups in
Speaker 1: the s EO BIZ and that would be Search engine
Speaker 1: optimization UM, an acronym and exciting topic guess the world
Speaker 1: of acronyms. According to Search Engines UH, with the Google algorithm, basically,
Speaker 1: what they're doing is they're trying to make sure that
Speaker 1: users who are using the Google Search engine are getting
Speaker 1: the best results for any particular search terms they're putting in.
Speaker 1: So any time you go to Google and you insert
Speaker 1: a certain keyword or phrase UM, ideally the first few
Speaker 1: results that pop up should be the ones that are
Speaker 1: most pertinent to your search, and you shouldn't have to
Speaker 1: dig deeper and deeper in. Now that's kind of important
Speaker 1: because there's over a hundred and fifty million active web
Speaker 1: pages on the Internet, so you don't want to have
Speaker 1: to search through all of those manually, you know. I
Speaker 1: think it's fascinating that you know, in reading your article
Speaker 1: that Google has been able to weed out, you know,
Speaker 1: tricks that might try that people might try to push
Speaker 1: the site up on the page. Like, for example, if
Speaker 1: we wanted you to read why is the Google algorithm
Speaker 1: so important? Why we don't you know, type into the
Speaker 1: web page somewhere Google algorithm, Google algorithm, Google algorithm fifty times.
Speaker 1: That's actually gonna push it down the page. And uh,
Speaker 1: and you know it's it's interesting to note that it's
Speaker 1: it's dependent on who links to you to your page
Speaker 1: and how old your site is. So these are all
Speaker 1: in the instruction set, right, Yes, this algorithm includes all
Speaker 1: of these factors. Um. In the past, search engines would
Speaker 1: mainly look for certain keywords in a page, which maybe
Speaker 1: you've come across a web page where at the very
Speaker 1: very bottom, if you scroll all the way down, you
Speaker 1: see this block of text and it's just random words
Speaker 1: all thrown together. That's just to get search engine hits
Speaker 1: for any of these terms. So it's pretty much any
Speaker 1: word that webmaster could think of, right well, that that
Speaker 1: doesn't guarantee a good search results experience. So yes, Google
Speaker 1: guards against that. They really look at the content of
Speaker 1: the site. Um. And as you say, they look at
Speaker 1: the links that are coming. That are the websites that
Speaker 1: are linking to the website in question. Um. So the
Speaker 1: more websites that linked to that that particular page, the
Speaker 1: higher that page will rank in Google search results. And interestingly,
Speaker 1: if those those sites that are linking to the page
Speaker 1: are themselves very important pages. Then that also boosts the
Speaker 1: particular web pages ranking and Google. Um, that's where the
Speaker 1: mystery comes in. We know that that the algorithm uh
Speaker 1: does these things. We just don't know how much Google
Speaker 1: waits one criterion against another. Uh. We had some readers
Speaker 1: ask us about this. They said, well, if if the
Speaker 1: Google algorithm is patented, how can it be a secret. Well,
Speaker 1: the patent tells us that Google ranks pages based upon
Speaker 1: these links, but it doesn't tell us how they determine
Speaker 1: which links are more important than others, not not specifically.
Speaker 1: So that's where the mystery comes in. That you know,
Speaker 1: that's just amazing that they're they're able to do that,
Speaker 1: and then they can tweak it on the fly. Um,
Speaker 1: because you were telling me about an article that you
Speaker 1: had seen, right, Yes, there's an article in a popular mechanics.
Speaker 1: They interviewed a Google executive and he admitted that in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, Google tweaked their algorithm four hundred fifty times.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's it's amazing to know that they could
Speaker 1: do that. I know I've used the word amazing a
Speaker 1: lot of times, amazing number of times to Google it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it would come right up, probably would accept.
Speaker 1: I've used it so many times you would push it right.
Speaker 1: It's true. Um, but yeah, it's it's um. Just fascinating
Speaker 1: that they're able to change it that frequently. Uh. Still
Speaker 1: and still, you know, receive a normal amount of traffic
Speaker 1: and handle the load without any problems and still remain
Speaker 1: the trusted search source simply because you know the way
Speaker 1: that they're they're processing this information from all the people.
Speaker 1: In fact, I would say that that's why they're such
Speaker 1: a trusted search source. It's because they're constantly tweaking to
Speaker 1: make sure you get the best search results for any
Speaker 1: particular search. Well. To read more about that, you can
Speaker 1: visit why is the Google Algorithms So Important? Which is
Speaker 1: up today at how stuff works dot com. Thanks for
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