Leaked documents from Google suggest that where the search giant stores links to a web page determines, at least in part, how trustworthy that page is.
Google stores its index of web pages on three tiers of hardware systems, each with different processing speeds, according to leaked Google engineering documents. First reported A paper by consultant Mike King suggests that a link’s privileges are determined by its storage tier, with the faster the tier, the greater the privileges.
“This is something we already suspected, but the leaked data suggests that the value of a link is related to where the page it resides on is stored in Google’s index.” To tell Barry Adams, a consultant who helps publishers optimize their articles for the Google News ecosystem, including Top Stories and Discover, also noted that Google News’ algorithm processes content much faster than universal search.
Google stores its index of webpage links in three hardware tiers, with links in the RAM tier considered more authoritative.
“When an article is published, Google wants to surface it in the top stories as quickly as possible because people want the latest news and breaking news. Many of the processes Google goes through as part of the normal indexing and ranking of content don’t necessarily apply to news. To process news search results, Google has to take some shortcuts along the way,” Adams says.
Ted Kubaitis of SEO Tool Lab Tested How quickly Google recognizes and incorporates new links into its rankings. So far, it has taken Google at least three weeks to recognize the authority of a new backlink and apply it to the ranking of a web page. News cycles are much faster.
A few years ago, Google overtook Yahoo to become the top search engine by treating links as recommendations from web users and ranking pages accordingly. The more recommendations and links a webpage receives from other domains, the higher the page will rank. Google calls this “citation indexing.” The logic is circular: all other ranking factors being equal, links from webpages with many authoritative links are more authoritative than pages with no links.
Storage Tiers
Google’s index of web pages is stored across three tiers of hardware:
- Ram: This is the fastest and most valuable tier and is reserved for popular and highly ranked web pages. The RAM storage contains popular news articles and suggests backlinks from news articles. Delegate more authority They will get more visitors than those from niche blogs or low traffic sites.
- Solid-state drives: The middle tier offers faster retrieval than traditional spinning hard drives, but is slower than RAM, and pages stored here are accessed less frequently than pages in RAM, but still hold significant value.
- Hard Disk Drive: The slowest tier, the spinning hard disk, stores old or infrequently accessed pages that are less valuable in terms of link value.
News Publisher
What is engagement? Ranking signals that have long been questionedThis is especially true for Google’s Discover feed. The leaked data confirms what I and other SEO consultants have already suspected: Google’s ranking algorithms likely track user interaction metrics.
This means that your search results listings must generate clicks and engagement. To ensure a high ranking, your pages Must appear Search results and Receive a click Users stay on your page for at least a few seconds. If they leave quickly and spend too much time on another list, your page may not maintain its ranking.
News publishers with strict paywalls have lower engagement metrics and therefore lower rankings. Google Discover Fewer feeds, fewer external citations.
To mitigate this issue, many publishers implement “leaky” paywalls that allow visitors to view a few pages for free before subscribing. This approach drives engagement and increases the likelihood that your content will be included in Top Stories or the Discover feed. However, excessive ads, pop-up overlays, and interstitials can increase bounce rates and lower engagement signals.
SEO impact
For search optimizers, this three-tier revelation necessitates a shift in link building strategies. Traditional methods such as acquiring links from niche sites or older content that is more likely to be stored in a lower-value tier may see a diminishing impact on rankings.
Therefore, your link building strategy should prioritize web pages stored in Google’s RAM tier, which means securing mentions in high-traffic news articles and publications that pass along high link value.
Barry Adams says, “To generate news stories you need a creative link building campaign with creative content marketing. To get news coverage you also need what I call ‘serious PR’.”
Google recently added Abuse of the site’s reputation This policy, which states in its webspam policy that “third-party pages are published with little or no first-party oversight or involvement,” could ultimately result in search engines ignoring your press releases, especially if absent publishers aggregate your company’s news releases on unindexed subdomains.
At the time of writing, we are still getting good results from search engine optimization press releaseIt doesn’t matter whether they produce original news coverage or are aggregated under a publisher subdomain, but publishers and press release distributors seem to be scrutinizing their content more diligently.
