The way in which search engines rank relevant websites on their results pages has changed many times since the days of Metacrawler and Infoseek, and Google sources say that further changes will be forthcoming.
Search Engine Watch’s Eric Enge writes that several new factors will be taken into account when determining a page’s rank in relevant Google search results. Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals will now be able to use a page’s minimal load time as a way to boost it further up Google’s search ranks.
Additionally, writes Enge, Google News will focus more heavily on sites that get more clicks, Local Search will take non-link references into account, and social media results will be factored in as a way to measure "freshness."
Search engine optimization (SEO) experts agree that the impact of these changes, while still partially unclear, will be critically important to the practice of effective SEO. There is, as yet, no indication as to which of these new ranking factors will be applied to Google’s video search, one of the fastest growing SEO markets.
