As SEOs, we know a lot about Google. Algorithm updates are usually based on published patents . The fundamental purpose of the updates is to eliminate questionable SEO practices .
Questionable practices are any practices that attempt to exploit loopholes in Google's algorithm to achieve higher search engine rankings. Google penalizes websites that do this because the content provided to users on their search results pages is generally of low quality, meaning that the search engine results suffer as well.
Anyone who has been playing the SEO game for several years is well aware of the main Black hat tactics that Google penalizes (we will see some concrete examples later in the article).
Quick read: 3 Google patents to know to avoid an SEO penaltyPatent of October 8, 2013 concerning " content spinning ": automatic rewriting of identical pages to avoid duplicate content.
Patent of December 13, 2011 concerning " keyword stuffing ": keyword stuffing to position a site on a single word.
Patent of March 5, 2013 concerning " cloaking ": camouflage of content to deceive the algorithm.
To learn all about these Google patents and discover concrete examples of penalties related to them, simply read on
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Why is it important how Google identifies Black Hat tactics?Because you don't want to accidentally make SEO mistakes that result in Google penalizing you! They'll think you're trying to take advantage of the system.
In fact, you simply made some costly SEO mistakes because you didn't know it. To better understand how Google's algorithm identifies bad SEO practices (and thus better understand how to avoid making SEO mistakes), you should review Google's patents on some of the most common black hat tactics.
Content spinningThe patent in question: “ Identifying gibberish content in resources ” (patent October 8, 2013) [1]
Content spinning is often used for link building purposes.
A website will rewrite the same post hundreds of times in an attempt to increase its number of links and traffic , while avoiding it being considered duplicate content. Some sites even manage to generate revenue from this type of content, through advertising links.
However, since rewriting content is quite a tedious task, many sites turn to automatic writing software that can automatically replace nouns and verbs . This usually results in the creation of very poor quality content, or, in other words, gibberish.
The patent explains how Google identifies this type of content by identifying incomprehensible or incorrect sentences within a web page. Google's system uses several factors to assign a contextual score to the page: this is known as the " gibberish score ."
Google uses a language model that can recognize when a string of words is artificial. It identifies and analyzes the different n-grams on a page and compares them to other n-gram groupings on other websites. An n-gram is a contiguous sequence of elements (in this case, words).
From this, Google generates a language model score and a query stuffing score . This is the frequency with which certain terms are repeated in the content . These scores are then combined to calculate the gibberish score. This is then analyzed to determine whether the content's position in the results page should be changed.
Although the patent does not explicitly state that this system is intended to penalize spin-related articles, these often contain a lot of gibberish and are therefore the first to be penalized.
Keyword StuffingThe patent in question: “ Detecting spam documents in a phrase based information retrieval system ” (December 13, 2011) [2]
Keyword stuffing is one of the oldest "black hat" practices. It involves the unnecessary use of numerous keywords in order to improve the SEO of a piece of content.
At one time, many pages contained little or no useful information because they were just stuffing keywords together, with little regard for the meaning of the sentences. Google's algorithm update has helped put a stop to this strategy.
The patent
The way Google indexes pages based on complete sentences is extremely complex. Addressing this patent (which is not the only one on this topic) is a first step toward understanding the impact of keywords on indexing.
Google's system for understanding sentences can be broken down into three steps :
The system collects the expressions used as well as statistics relating to their frequency and co-occurrence.
It then classifies them as good or bad based on the frequency statistics it collected.
Finally, using the predictive measure that the system has established from the statistics related to the co-occurrence of words, it refines the content of the list of expressions considered good.
The technology Google uses to accomplish these steps can be a headache! That's why we're going to get straight to the point.
How does this system allow Google to identify cases of keyword stuffing?
In addition to being able to determine how many keywords are used in a given document (obviously, a document with a keyword density of 50% is keyword stuffing), Google is also able to measure the number of phrases related to a keyword (these are LSI keywords).
A normal document typically has between 8 and 20 related sentences , according to Google, compared to 100 or even up to 1,000 for a document using spamming methods.
By comparing the statistics of documents that use the same keywords and related phrases, Google can determine if a document uses more keywords and related phrases than average.
Keyword stuffing is one of the most serious SEO mistakes. Fortunately, it's relatively easy to avoid. Don't focus on keywords, but on the quality of your content. This should help you avoid being penalized.
CloakingThe patent in question: “ Systems and methods for detecting hidden text and hidden links ” (March 5, 2013) [3]
Cloaking is a way to trick a search engine's algorithm by disguising a page.
This allows a website to be listed as something it is not . Imagine a disguise that allows a site to sneak into search results. It will only be discovered if a user clicks on it and notices a difference.
There are a number of different ways to cloak a website . You can:
usebolivia phone number data benin phone number data white text on a white background;
place text behind an image or video;
set your font size to 0;
hide links by inserting them into a single character (a hyphen between two words for example);
use CSS to position your text off screen...
These cloaking tactics allow you to artificially boost a page's SEO. For example, you can place a list of keywords unrelated to the topic of the post at the bottom of the page in white on a white background.
In its patent, Google explains that its system can detect this type of deception by inspecting the Document Object Model (DOM).
A page's DOM allows Google to collect information about the various elements on the page . These include: text size, text color, background color, text position, layer order, and text visibility.
The system, by analyzing the DOM, will realize that you have tried to cloak your website in order to trick the search engine.
