Google released a giant list of 86 “search quality” changes it made in June and July, beyond the various changes it had already blogged about. We’re breaking down the list by various categories to take a closer look at the kinds of things Google has been up to. So far, we’ve looked at:
- Quality-related changes
- Mobile-specific changes
- Natural language search changes
Now, let’s look at the changes Google has revealed, which are directly related to how Google ranks search results.
First, Google says the change referred to as “ng2,” better orders top results using a new and improved ranking function for combining several key ranking features.
Another list entry (Ref-16) involves changes to an “official pages” algorithm to “improve internationalization”. This is part of Google’s “Other Ranking Components” project.
Another change listed under the project codename “Other Ranking Components,” includes one that helps you find more high quality content from trusted sources (#82367). Also under that label are several, which Google says will help make its system better for clustering web results “better and simpler.” These include: #82541, NoPathsForClustering, and bergen. “We’ve made our algorithm for clustering web results from the same site or same path (same URL up until the last slash) more consistent,” says Google of NoPathsForClustering.
Change #81933, Google says, improves use of query synonyms in ranking. “Now we’re less likely to show documents where the synonym has a different meaning than the original search term,” Google says.
Another change (Manzana2) improves the clustering and ranking of links in the expanded sitelinks feature. Another (“Improvements to Images Universal ranking”) improves Google’s ability to show universal image search results on infrequently searched-for queries, and another improves the efficiency of Google’s Book Search ranking algorithms. It makes them more consistent with Web Search, Google says.
Have you noticed if any of these have had a direct impact on how Google ranks your pages?
