Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Ranking criteria fall into three broad categories. The first is link popularity, which is used by a number of search engines to some extent. Google's PageRank is the original form of "link pop," and remains its purest expression. The next category is on-page characteristics. These include font size, title, headings, anchor text, word frequency, word proximity, file name, directory name, and domain name. The last is content analysis. This generally takes the form of on-the-fly clustering of produced results into two or more categories, which allows the searcher to "drill down" into the data in a more specific manner. Each method has its place. Search engines use some combination of the first two, or they use on-page characteristics alone, or perhaps even all three methods.
My little website uses code similar to...
<P class=header>Here's the header</p>
<P class=body>Here's the main text</p>
...which it seems, to Google, will look the same size.
If this page is right (and it's mightily paranoid about Google, so doubtful), would reconfiguring the <H1> tag be the best option for headers, rather than using <P class=header>? I wonder if it would give more targetted results for the AdSense ads?
Since my site is entirely database-driven, this is a trivial change. I might do that later today - I need to work on the styles anyway - and see what it might do. Has anyone else any experience in this? And should navigation text work better in <h5>, or <small>, or...?
Hmm, interesting.
Font size is, without question, used by the adsense algo, however. I'm not sure how your question relates to adsense.
It also reads as if H6 is still more important than a plain <P>, so I guess I'll make my headers H1 and my subheaders (which normally give a precis of the article) H2. Interesting - thanks for the thought.
How is this related to AdSense? If my content is easier to pick out than the navigation, surely this is a good thing, and will assist the AdSense algo to give me even more precisely-targeted ads.
No, but getting rid of "style" and "class" id's on those attributes would.
What do you mean by "getting rid of" class and style ID's. Are you saying is is better to use the default <H1> etc sizes, rather than modify them using css?
I find the defailt sizes a bit, um, clunky.
I find the defailt sizes a bit, um, clunky.
Google takes into account the "weight" of text. So an <H1> on the page is more important than a <P>. You can still use css with your H1 (<H1 class=header>) so you can change the sizes to how you wish :)
Ewan
Quick tutorial and possible precis of where we are...
This doesn't help the AdSense algo to work out what's the important stuff...
<P class=header>This is the header</p>
<P class=body>This is the main body text</p>
This might...
<H1 class=header>This is the header</H1>
<P class=body>This is the main body text</p>
...however, I think Brett is advocating...
<html><head>
<style> H1 {font-family: Verdana; font-size:130%;} </style>
</head><body>
<H1>This is the header</H1>
<P class=body>This is the main body text</p></body></html>
...i.e. redefining the H1 tag rather than applying classes to it.
Good call. Will go and play.
redefining the H1 tag
Yup, that's the way to go. I would redefine the <p> as well while you're at it- less code.
I've done that work on my main site: making the H1 the main header, and H2 the little precis. I hope to get (even more) targeted ads as a result... not that I can tell you whether it'll have an effect, of course, but I hope it does.
The award-winning and proprietary Google search technologies are the foundation for AdSense. We go beyond simple keyword matching to understand the context and content of web pages. Based on an algorithm that includes such factors as keyword analysis, word frequency, font size, and the overall link structure of the web, we know what a page is about, and can precisely match Google ads to each page.
So it also looks like they are looking at who you are linking to, as well as who is linking to you.
You may also want to hop over to the Applied Semantics website and click around over there, never know what tidbits you'll find.
