Google Makes Good On Author Boost

Looking as far back as 2009 and earlier, Google was working on new ways for replacing page rank for Google Search

Here’s a quote from Search Engine Land released from Google discussing how Google News was working on a independent algorithm from regular Google Search

Google News taps into its own unique ranking signals, which include user clicks, the estimated authority of a publication in a particular topic, freshness, geography and more.

Search looks so much different today as you analyze what types of sites are ranking in Google search, they pretty much follow the protocol that Google News was formed around

The original Page rank algorithm in my opinion was created more on the mechanical end of things, hence was easily deceived into ranking websites

What you will see today is a search based heavily in brand, and authority as opposed to one page wonders highly optimized to rank

Just look in the Google Search Engine Pages (SERPs) today, the evidence of them carrying this plan out has happened

If you do only one change in your SEO to do’s for 2015 and beyond is just look at the evidence, the SERPs

Looking and analyzing them will give you the clues that you will need to get those websites to page one

A 2013 video from Matt Cutts discussing the authority topic keeps reinforcing year after year that your rankings will be based upon the authority of your domain, the writing has been on the wall for some time now

From Search Engine Land

The portion of the video of when Matt Cutts talks about authority boost starts at 4 minutes and 37 seconds into the video and ends at 5 minutes and 3 seconds. Here is the video followed by my best effort at transcribing that portion:

We have also been working on a lot of ways to help regular webmasters.

We are doing a doing a better job of detecting when someone is sort of an authority in a specific space. It could be medical, it could be travel, whatever. And trying to makes sure that those rank a little more highly, if you are some sort of authority or a site that according to the algorithms we think might be a little bit more appropriate for users.

We’re trying to measure those kinds of topics. Because you know you really want to listen to the experts in each area if you can.

They have long done this and more

In addition Google has publicly announced the end of page rank as we know it

John Mueller even confirmed it in a Google Hangout, he said this at the 20:30 mark in the video. Here is an embed of the video if you want to hear it yourself:

What’s the take away from this?

In order to succeed ranking in Google’s Search today you need to know if you have the authority and ability

You can only do this if you study the SERPs, the SERPs is the evidence to guide you