Essential reading for webmasters

Ok as some might know, I've worked for Google at some points in the past (through Lionbridge Technologies) and still keep an eye on it because it's good to get inside knowledge.

Yes they have their algorythms designed to get the best sites to the top, but when they do get to the top, they have to be reviewed with a human eye in order to make sure the site has quality. This is the reason the review panel exists and is the reason some of you go from page one to page 10 without warning.

Here I will tell you the major factors Google are looking to remove, I will also post the review manual we follow so that you can skirt on the edge of what they consider to be unwritten rules. I should also mention a caveat, they do occasionally chenge the review process. Not much in all honesty, certainly not the fundamentals, but it CAN change at any time.

Definition of the search query:
Is the result directly related to the search query? Keyword placement will not do you much good here, if your keywords are not related to the topic of the page i.e. keyword spamming, this will pick it up.

Porn
If your page has an adult theme then they try hard to remove it from the search results unless the search query is directly requesting adult material. So if you have adult ads on there and your site is dedicated to roast chicken, then the search engine will be very unlikely to return your result on that search term due to the adult flag. Maybe if the search term was spit-roast then it might.

Spam
Hidden text, keyword spamming, sneaky redirects, framing and cloaking is all checked for. We are advised to download the Search Engine Optimization addon for Firefox and check for javascript, image and frame spamming as well as checking the page source.

Also a site should get a bad marker if for example, the ads look too alike to the content which encourages the user to click the ads.

Read it and be educated.

At 3.5MB it's too large to upload here so download it from here instead. Any questions, just ask.