The administrator at WebmasterWorld, aka Tedster, posted his thoughts on how he breaks down the Google algorithm in a WebmasterWorld thread.
The truth is, he said back in the older days, there was this "punch list" approach where you knew you had to hit X factors in Google's rankings and as long as you hit those off your punch list, you were pretty set. Now things are different and the "punch list" approach doesn't work as well. Now he said we need to think in a more "functional" approach to this.
He lists out his reasoning but ends up saying that "Google may be so complicated that no one anywhere understands the whole thing any more - not even Amit Singhal." Amit is Google's top guy in search, he is the single person responsible for how search works at Google.
Tedster talks about:
- Big data and how they have so many ranking signals that we can't fully comprehend it.
- They are statisticians and use math to the fullest
- Google automates taxonomy building
- Google saves the data forever so they have historical signals as well
The thread has the potential to turn into a great one.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.