By Amy Munice

EVERYTHING (!) you need to know about reverse engineering Google Algorithms?

Yes—In this short article you will truly learn “EVERYTHING” you need to know about reverse engineering Google algorithms.

In fact, this could be an extremely short article, because “EVERYTHING” you need to know about reverse engineering Google algorithms--or any search engine’s algorithms, for that matter-- is NOTHING.

Please allow me to de-code this statement for you so that it sounds less like a Zen logic enigma.

Search engines are changing ALL THE TIME. Every time you or I or your colleague, your competitor, your uncle or your aunt goes to the search bar and seeks information they are CHANGING the database that web crawlers feed upon. These web crawlers, or more accurately the engineers who design them, just want to find out how people (all of us and each of us) are seeking things and what they seek.

That ever-expanding knowledgebase helps them get smarter. By “smarter” I mean it gives potential to change the algorithms at work to help speed searchers along the road to find what they seek. It’s a big communal effort—we each pave the way for the next searcher. So if you are trying to “reverse engineer” Google algorithms, ask yourself first—which ones? Today’s algorithms, yesterday’s algorithms, or tomorrow’s algorithms, or the day after that and so on. The World Wide Web is a very dynamic place--- constant only in that it is constantly changing. Or, as the oft-quoted Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus is said to have put it, “..you cannot step in the same river twice.”

If you concentrate on trying to reverse engineer Google algorithms for search engine optimization—whether you call it that or not—you are simply wasting your time, and/or someone’s money.

“But wait!” you say. “I have followed the suggested course SEO professionals have prescribed (e.g. increase phrase depth, add to page count, etc.) and we have gotten documented improvements in our traffic. How do you explain that?”

That in fact should be the case half of the time even if the SEO consultant advising you or you are flying blind. In other words, half are going to be lucky—predictably.

Why do I say “half”? Because on the web, your page or site is ALWAYS graded on a curve. Moreover, this “curve” is only in the wee part of the WORLD WIDE WEB where you truly compete. If you are selling tires the requisite inbound link text or keyword text proximity or ANY on-page or off-page factor is bound to be in quite a different mix than the web page that is trying to sell mobile phones. The suggestion that there is some elusive magic formula for mixing on-page and off-page SEO factors that works for everyone should go where the pseudo-science of alchemy went.

If this sounds facile to you may I respectfully suggest that it might be timely for you to learn about natural language processing and update your search engine optimization knowledgebase.

And if you want to know what IS important if reverse engineering search engine algorithms is a total waste of time, please read my next column, which will discuss how math-based tools can be used to gain REAL competitive advantages on the web.

About the author and Global B2B Communications

Amy Munice is President of ALM Communications, now also d.b.a. Global B2B Communications (http://www.globalb2bcommunications.com/). Amy is on a mission to clear up widespread misunderstandings of how worldwide search engines work that affect her 20+ year PR firm’s clientele and similar companies that sell B2B services and products worldwide.

ALM Communications - http://www.globalb2bcommunications.com/marketing-pr/ - serves B2B companies that sell math, science, engineering or other technical products or services worldwide. ALM is gives guarantees on numbers of published articles and other communication tools for lead generation and incorporates state-of-the-art artificial intelligence-based search engine optimization tools into all PR campaigns.

Relevant links:

internet marketing, search engine optimization, search engine optimization classes