Most successful businesses start from humble beginnings and the best search engines are the products of student projects at universities. The research project by two Stanford University students of PhD; Larry Page and Sergey Brin is an ample manifestation of the above stated fact. When the two students started working on their project, many successful search engines were operating and AltaVista was leading the market. To grab the growing number of internet users, every search engine was trying to index the bulk of web pages without any consideration for quality. The idea of ranking the most relevant page on the top fascinated Larry Page. He was obsessed with this point, which all the other search engines missed; namely the quality of search engine indexing and ranking.

The hypothesis of Page’s research thesis was based on the argument; a link from one site to another was akin to an academic citation and the anchor text attached with the link was like an annotation. He assumed that if we could single out the sites cited the most for any particular subject, we could also index the subject area vis-à-vis its significance or authority.

Page was fascinated by a fundamental weakness in the original design of Tim Berners-Lee’s web. He noticed that it was very easy to see the links from a website but it was very hard to see the backlinks to the site. BackRub, Google’s former name, was using the method of cataloguing all the links on the web to give authority to a site on a given subject. Page did not intend to launch his own search engine at this point but his curiosity in this field lead him towards the creation of a new type of crawler. This crawler was based on a system of link-ranking that is still considered to be the best type of page ranking.

What is Important for Google?

The core system in Google’s algorithm is based upon the same link-ranking system developed by Larry Page at Stanford. The system is called PageRank. It is named after the inventor of this system (Larry Page) and not the pages of the web.
Google has explained PageRank in the following way:

“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B…”

The explanation shows PageRank in the form of a big electronic voting system. The page which gets the highest number of votes will go to the top of PageRank scale of 0 to 10. In simple words, the importance or authority of a page is determined by the quantity of links.

But, this is only one side of the picture. Google further explains it in the following way:

“Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important.’” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.’

In this voting analogy used by Google, PageRank is not a voting machine that gives equal importance to all the links. The vote by the sites which already has accumulated large quantities of votes has greater authority than the relatively unknown sites. In other words, not only the quantity of links but also the quality of links is important for Google PageRank.

What is Relevant for Google?

The relevance of material in a web page also holds prime importance for getting top PageRank. We can illustrate this with the help of a simple example. Every body knows that the Guggenheim Museum, New York is a popular art gallery and is often sited by many as an important resource. Guggenheim is a gallery for modern art and if you look for seventeenth century art, you will not be able to find contents from this gallery.

However, if you are searching for some particular artist that is relevant to the Guggenheim collection, you will certainly find it among the top ranking pages. For example, you can try ‘Piet Mondrian’ in Google or Yahoo! The results will show Guggenheim in the top 10. How does Google rank this? This is explained by Google it self; the search engine “goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.”

In simple words, Guggenheim page ranks in the top 10 for the word Piet Mondrian because a lot of galleries have linked to the text Mondrian on the Guggenheim page.

This complicated process is called text matching. The importance of these text links is based upon the quality of the link. The quality of link is based on the relevance of anchor text with the key phrase. The relevance of anchor text determines the quality of the link. The closer the anchor text to the key phrase, the link will be considered to have more quality.

What is deemed reliable by Google?

Google gives more weight and assigns greater ‘trust’ to a site in its algorithm which has more quality links. It is often called TrustRank. Any links from authoritative websites established in the earlier days of web, Yahoo! Directory and Open Project Directory, and websites with domains like .gov and .edu are considered to carry greater reliability and weight. These links can enhance the PageRank of a website.
Final word on Google page rankingBriefly, we can say that today Google’s algorithm uses all the factors like relative importance, relevance and reliability to determine the authority or significance of a web page. The PageRank algorithm considers link quantity and the importance of the link source to determine the significance of a page. The TrustRank determines reliability of a page using age of the page as a proxy. Relevance of the text is determined by the Text Matching algorithm using relevance of the source and site and various other factors. All these algorithms work together with different filters to produce high quality results just in milliseconds for any request from the web browsers.

Keywords are the foundation of any SEO program. Keywords will play a large part in determining where what your search engine results page (SERP) will be. It will also determine if your target audience will find your page or not. So it is important to keep these aspects in mind when selecting the keyword for your site. However, the problem most web owners face is finding out what’s right for them and what’s not. The right keywords can enable you to be the first site searchers click on when they conduct a search. On the other hand, the wrong keyword will make you nobody in the vast internet marketplace.

You need to look into two different kinds of keywords. The first kind is the “brand keywords“. Basically, brand keyword will be associated with your brand. It is apparent that this is an important aspect but a lot of people still make the mistake of not paying attention to these types of keywords. The second kind of keywords is the “generic keywords“. Generic keywords are not directly related to your company brand. For example, if your website is TeenFashion.com, keywords such as clothing, cargo pants, teen shirts, and tank tops are the possible generic keywords for your site.

Going back to brand keywords, you need to realize that if you don’t use keywords found in your business name, specific business category, or business description, you are missing out on a lot of opportunities. You might think that it is not necessary to integrate these keywords because it is already associated with your site. However, ask yourself the question, “If I don’t own these keywords, who will?” and “If someone decides to own them, how will they use these keywords to direct visitor traffic away from me?”

But before we get too deep into keyword descriptions, you should be aware that keywords can fall into two categories including the keywords you pay a fee for (pay-per-click) and naturally occurring keywords (organic keywords). When you begin to consider which keywords you will use on your site, you should start thinking about words that apply to your niche. Every business has its own buzzwords that searchers think about when they think about that business.

You can start your keyword selection by thinking about keywords broadly; you need to realize that this will not necessarily bring good search results. So you need to narrow down your choices to specific keywords and key phrases which will bring in targeted traffic. Take note that it would be a good idea to use key phrases with two to three words because key phrases will bring more traffic than single words. In addition, it is easier for you to achieve a higher ranking with key phrases compared to a single keyword.

Almost all SEO’s would confirm that the most important thing which is required for your site content is the selection of the right keywords. If you select the wrong keywords, you may generate a large amount of traffic but this will not end up in sales. Sometimes the wrong keyword selection may give you no traffic at all. Both of these cases will be trouble for any online business. Before the Wordtracker was introduced it was mainly the responsibility of the marketer or the client to select the required keywords. Different web based services will also give you ideas for keywords that might be favorable for your business. Some people also had to get other search term tools which were the only hub for keywords at that time.

When Wordtracker entered the picture, things become easier. Now, you can plug in a few keywords using Wordtracker, and the web-based service will provide you with keyword data and ideas for more keywords. This might help your business immensely. Besides this Wordtracker will also assist you in analyzing which keyword is being searched more and has done well in the last 24 hours at each of the major search engines. Wordtracker can single-handedly help you enhance the volume of traffic to your site.
Let’s say that you deal in health supplements and provide shipping over the internet. The first thing you need to do is to identify your audience. Who would be interested in buying this product? Potential audiences could be people who are ‘weak’ and want to recover their weight by using this supplement. So let’s take this as the first step and start with it.

• Click comprehensive search at Worldtracker and type in ‘weak’, hit proceed button
• Go down to the end of the page and search for the term ‘competitive search’, click it. For now do not give any consideration to the results it has produced.
• Select any two of your favorite engines or for that matter directory and than click.
• What is the result? ‘Weak’ and all other related words to weak, are definitely not good options because the result of traffic comparisons is really low. Targeting these words will not generate the expected traffic. In reality such things can happen when you are doing all the strategic work yourself.
• So let us go back to square one and try ‘food supplement’. Again this does not prove to be a good term.
• Now, we want to try the word ‘weight gain’. After all the health supplements are generally about weight gains and even for those who work out regularly and want to maintain their strength. So, this key word can identify the most suitable audience for health supplement sellers.
• Finally after analyzing the wordtracker generated keywords for famous engines such as; MSN and Google, for the term ‘weight gain’, we can pick the next term, ‘technique of weight gain’, just because this is a very appropriate term to market our product. Some times the most popular keywords with very high KEI don’t even work with your product so you have to be careful. Do your research thoroughly!

Microsoft Adcenter Labs is working on various new tools that will improve the digital advertising campaign. The latest technologies are integrated with enhanced algorithms in keyword analysis and visuals for handling images, videos and speech patterns for video ad recognition and enhanced marketing aptitude.

Advance advertising tools introduced by MS adcenter Labs is, the first individual product produced is video analyzer by adcenter labs. This tool can assist the marketers in the following ways:

• The tool lets marketing experts insert a video link, in online video advertisements.

• The links inserted in the videos about specific products can take the user directly to some particular website, where they can get more content related to that product or purchase it.

• A computer-visual algorithm keeps track of selected contents as they appear in different frames of the video, and than each of this content is assigned with a different set of attributes including texts and graphics.

Through generating this technology adcenter labs will promote ads that refer directly to the subject of the video. When the video shifts to some other topic all related ads are changed simultaneously. Basically it uses a JavaScript to apply the highlighted terms and commenting parameters. It can use the authorization of windows live identifications. So, that people can choose contents to be viewed from trusted parties only. The edge this technology has over other online tools is that it allows labeling of any specific area, where as other tools do not allow this.

Another technology used is Content Analysis Engine. It is used as an advanced algorithm to mechanically analyze and extract content form search keywords. This basically is to help search engines understand the user demand in a better way to reduce search complexities. This is no doubt a very useful tool for marketers to maintain relevant keywords by analyzing the different queries and ad categories. This categorization also helps in monetizing ads efficiently by pulling in additional content openings. You may be interested in knowing how it works. An efficient algorithm evaluates the keywords entered:

• By those users who are buyers.

• By those who are not looking to buy anything but are searching for general information.

• This algorithm than produces an estimate statistic which appraises how likely users are to purchase online.

For instance, the term “digital monitor” has a rating of 0.65 out of 1.0. This is very useful information for marketers to analyze the content presented on their web pages.

Ad Research dashboard introduced last year by Adcenter labs is built on the completion of keyword services policy. This can help marketers access the analytical data plus the enhanced algorithm stored in Adcenter’s actual database to create their marketing campaigns.

Apart from these three above mentioned technologies Microsoft Ad center labs are also generating new projects such as Air Wave, content Detection, and Intelligent Bud Ads The ultimate goal of ad center labs is to help marketers generate more relevant and client based advertisements for their customers.

Google Trends is a unique and new tool promoted by Google labs to support webmasters in analyzing their keywords. Here is how google trends processes information:

• A user can enter up to 5 phrases or keywords.
• System will return a chart showing complete details of the volume with which each word or phrase is used.
• For instance if the user enters the word ‘clothes’ and ‘designer clothes’, the Google system will show the result that clothes searches are twice as much as designer clothes or vice versa.
• If a search term has received more than enough searches in the past, than the Google Trends tool can bring you the graphical chart, showing the information on that term for last 24 months.

It does not give the user actual numbers on how many times a term is exactly used like 10 or may be 10,000 but it will provide a comparison in graphical forms. We do not know whether these figures are updated on a daily basis or not. This is no doubt very useful information for the ad sense and ad ware businesses.

You can easily find out, whether the trend is increasing or decreasing. If the trend is decreasing then you should avoid that keyword. You can instantly detect any changes to the popularity of the keywords due to seasonal trends. Like certain keywords will have increased popularity during the holiday season.

This is how the Google Trends result page looks like:

Google Trend is one apparatus which every statistical internet marketer is going to appreciate. At the moment it is in its beta testing phase, though it will be completed within a very short span of time. Just pick any topic that is suitable to your personal website and find its popularity in the search trends. If you discover that the context you have chosen has reduced in its popularity level than you can switch your topic and look for something which is more attractive than the previous one.

Google Trends also deliver other useful information including terrestrial comparisons, such as, city, language and regional. It becomes easier to evaluate what part of the world people focus more on ‘designer clothes’ and where it is more popular to search for ‘clothes’. This information can really help marketers and webmasters focus on the particular market or region suitable to their product.

Follow these instructions to find out the popularity of various keywords in different regions:

• There is an option to view the results from all countries or a particular country by using drop down boxes.

• These boxes can be found in the upper right corner of the Google Trends results page.

• There are other options with which you can view results for a particular month or year, starting from 2004.

• This can be done by using the drop down box.

• The results graph provides you an effective way for monitoring the search trends for your keywords.

Here are some instructions for better optimization by Google Trends:

1. The information is provided from the Google database, even though it’s in its beta phase, they have disclosed that it might not be 100% accurate. So, the main thing is to get this data and manipulate the required information even if it is vulnerable.

2. The basic purpose of this tool is to show comparisons. So, always look out for multiple keywords instead of typing a single term for search. This may generate a trend bar but there will be no comparison to make decisions.

3. Focus on polishing your skills regarding synonyms and other generally similar terms regarding your keyword. Because people might use other terms more specifically, such as instead of ‘designer clothes’ they can search for ‘men clothes’.

4. First set a few standards. Use some other tools to do the search for your required keyword and get the actual numbers for them. Later, you can use the more popular term with the Google Trends to get a valid comparison.

The whole Internet marketing business is based on the selection of useful keywords and their successful implementation. To get these correct and valuable keywords you definitely need a very efficient keyword tool, which can select the best possible combination. The number of people in the field of Internet marketing is in the millions but still it is an amazingly true fact that most of them do not know about the importance of keywords. Believe it or not keywords are the most required part of your website and every Internet marketer needs a keyword tool.

Google has introduced a program under the banner of Google Adware. This program is widely used and helps advertisers to prosper with in a very small time frame. To support its adware program Google has also launched a Keyword selecting tool known as Google Adwords Keywords Tool.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool is not actually a free ware. It costs only $5, which you can obtain as a credit to expend on adwords. This is indeed the best possible and very accurate investment you are going to make for your keyword. Google indeed is the biggest company which is providing data to people who are looking for keywords to support their services. They are also providing you with a tool to select keywords. How can you ignore this offer?

Here are some tips for you to get the most out of this keyword tool:

• First, sign in to your adwords account, and go to tool and then go to keyword tool.
• Search for a term that you want to research, and then click ‘use synonyms’.
• The Google keyword tool will come back to you with results as a list of keywords, which are confirmed to be pertinent by google standards.
• Now, get these terms and place them in to the search engine.
• Take the top 10 websites from the resulting page and again put them back in the tool ‘site related keyword’ tab and check for even more useful keywords.
• Now, utilize synonyms for every word you searched for and use all of them in your keyword list.
• Repeat this process in a loop, unless you have generated as many keywords as you require for your content.
• Now, you have plenty of keyword tools which you can use with any other research tool to scratch for long lasting keywords.
• In case you need more words, take out the list you got from the other tools and put it back in to google adwords keyword tool and look for more synonyms.
• Google traffic estimators can also be used as a guide to check which terms or keywords are in the highest rankings. They can also find the searches in the current rankings.

If you are an adsense user than you must keep in mind that this tool is not for publishers but is designed to support advertisers. Though, it is a very useful technique to keep in your publishing tool belt in order to enhance your blogs. It will assist you in utilizing the maximum potential of popular keywords when doing SEO via adsense.

Lexicon is a newly introduced tool by Facebook that follows language patterns. Generally lexicon searches for the usage of terms and words on groups, event walls and profiles.

You can follow these steps to perform keyword analysis through Facebook Lexicon:

• For instance you can enter ‘money, poverty’ to look for their comparison on event walls.
• You can compare up to 5 words.
• This quantity of 5 can be a word or a term containing a phrase joined by two words.

As long as enough people have used some particular term enough times, it will show as a graph. This tool mentions the number of users who posted each word per day on any profile, wall or group. The system is intelligent and it does not count the same terms posted by the same member at different intervals and places. Lexicon also can maintain trends such as what word was used more frequently during the month of December or what term has high usage rating currently. Lexicon can display as many data points as it can maintain over a graph. When any search term is replaced from the chart by un checking it; the whole graph is redrawn to make the result easier to read. This may cause the data points to change their positions on the graph but it surely provides more smooth analysis.

The text which is posted on each wall is cleaned and turned in to lower case before it is submitted to the system. At Facebook there are tools which let you know what other people are doing at that time. So, it would be really exciting to find out trends on the public and semi public forums across Facebook. Generally the data pulled out by the lexicon from the Facebook wall is anonymous and no personal account information is attached to it.

Graphical output of the tool:

The Wall is really an interesting place to look for buzz, because when a user writes something to a friend or on a group, there is a chance that millions of people are going to see it; that information can go around the whole network virally. For example it can set a trend for a movie rating, because many people will share sentiments about a common movie which is popular during that time.

How Lexicon works on the back end:

• The Facebook team uses a network of clustered computers that actually keep a count of occurrences of every word or term across walls groups and profiles every 24 hours.
• Before passing on this information, system filters all the personal data regarding all the users so that no link to the member can be created.
• No human employee at Facebook reads these messages and the system is not authorized to view the personal wall to wall postings, invitations or any other private communication between members.

Even though this tool by Facebook, measures up to Google trends, it has some faults. It usually has trouble with low rating words. It also chokes on phrases which are two words or use alpha numeric character. In an advance comparison, Google Trends also has a wider range of data and it can show results regarding, geographical and social traits, such as language, city and region.