101 | Google Algorithms Explained in Plain English | 2013

 Originally posted by Israel Rothman on Apr 20th, 2011 | Still true in 2013
I get really tired of less than forthcoming geeks trying to make this sound more complicated than it is in order to make themselves sound intelligent while keep all of you in the dark.  Google Algorithms use very simple logic: easy for a human to understand, albeit difficult to to get a machine to do.

Google, simply put, serves us.

Just as the newspaper that we used to get on our doorstep was free – the quarter paid the paper boy.  The news was free because you had to look on page 134 section d to read the rest of your personal interest article, and you couldn’t avoid seeing the ads along the way.

The local car dealership, grocery store, and furniture dealer paid for the news, by buying those big colorful ads that are no longer cost effective because the readership has dwindled as real time news has become available online.

Now there is Google: the source of everything: news, sports, weather, information, research, and all of us, and again, all free.

This is all paid for by ads: ads in the margins and at the top that we cannot avoid seeing, as we use Google search: and also ads on billions of other web pages that we visit: built by other people (some of them by us) which display Google ads, put there by Google after following you around, before you reach the web page! Google has a toolbar that follows you around, tracks your habits, places the right ads…

If you want to understand Google completely, understand that Google serves us. Google serves up to us what we are most interested in, according to us. Google is an it, not a they: it is a machine, with many components, that simply tracks us, determines what we like, and does a good job of giving it to us. Google is controlled by us, by the data that we provide: information about what we want, and information about what we have to offer. In a way, Google is just a great big free middleman for information: the information still does not come from Google: it comes from us.

In order to understand Google, (and the other search engines) you must understand us; Google search is a machine that simply serves us: our desires, our whims, our fetishes, and our needs. Google serves.

Because we search for an item or word or video a great deal, Google rates it as important.
Because we subscribe to an author, that ‘”source” of our authority (or what is called an RSS FEED) becomes rated in Google’s data base as being important: an “authority source”
All Google or any machine can do: they can follow patterns, and do predetermined things that we tell them to do in certain circumstances: in the case of the search algorithms, this is done bey tracing traffic patterns, analyzing the data, and rating information based on those patterns
The main algorithm is popularity: the more we historically like a page, the longer we spend there, the more often we visit: the more powerful that page is on competitive search.
While the proper formatting and arrangement of the data is also important, it is the value of the data that matters the most.

As various unrighteous would-be manipulating hackers of the system are systematically foiled by filters and and layers as the technology improves: code standards will continue to become more uniform, and the temporary technical arbitrage enjoyed by, for instance, the “SEO” industry fro the last several years, will systematically evaporate, leaving only the value of the data as a criteria for organic search.

There are actually two ways to get on the top of search results; you can pay more than anybody else (PPC) for each click until your money is gone, or you can contribute the data that rest of us consider to be most valuable.
What we do here, at upLog.org as a team, and jointly on the social networks, search engines and even occasionally in the main stream ‘shrinking media’; is to intentionally become the best source of that best data: thus we rank on purpose without breaking any rules every time.

Summary:
By first researching what is currently available from a certain search: then by intentionally creating a more useful resource, we are certain of instant rankings: because we are 100% sure that Google’s algorithms match our opinions. It works every time. If you understand the above, that should not surprise you.