***How Google Determines SERPs - Oldie but Goodie***

Hey guys,

I came across and old post from Matt Cutts that gives some pretty good info on how Google ranks their SERPs.

You can find it here:
Google Librarian Central - Article 12/2005 - 1

In a nutshell,

It appears that Relevance is top priority and he drops a few helpful clues on how that is determined.

He also points out that PageRank is probably the most well-known, but not the top factor in ranking results. Which is why any given search will pull results of different PRs and some lower PR pages will rank better than higher PR pages.

Also, high PR backlinks are good, but the relevance of those backlinks is better (i.e. relevant anchor text).

Pay special attention to the "Exercises for Students". You can pull some gems from those.

Also, read between the lines quite a bit, since he cannot (and would not) tell us ALL of the Search Factors. However, I think he givens the most important ones.

I've always felt like Google checks for a few top factors and whoever has the best overall score with those factors ranks first. In case of a "tie", they use other factors to determine the ranks and so on.

Anyway, this sheds a little light for newbies and may be a refresher for many veterans.

I see so many people just trying to get a Zillion Backlinks that may be irrelevant and may do them little good in the SERPs.

Even the relevant Backlinks may have overkill. You may only need, say, 78 Anchor Text Backlinks to topple your competitor (if your page is relevant enough), so why waste time and energy getting 1000 Anchor Text Backlinks.

Anyway, enjoy that link and let me know what you think.

(Obviously, Google may have new factors now, but I think that any search engine wants to provide Relevance above anything else because that is what the User expects.)