Intent and Localisations, Arbitrary and US centric ranking factors from the leaked Google Raters’ Handbook

The recently leaked Google Raters’ Handbook gave some interesting tidbits of information that many people involved with SEO, either optimising client sites, or working on their own corporate sites would be very interested to hear.

The majority of the blogs I have read on the subject highlight the increasing importance of reducing the prevalence of Doorway pages in the SERPs or the ranking of sites as Vital, Useful and Relevant. These are important topics as they show us how to avoid a penalty that we may have incurred accidentally, or how there are some sites that can never be top to the rankings as they have a “Vital” website sitting in the way (that said most queries have this as Wikipedia seems to appear as ”Vital” for everything).

My own decision to discuss the ramifications of the key points pertaining to Intent and Localisation is based on the fact that these points can be used by webmasters to help their rankings and can also explain a lack of performance by many websites.

Some Search Queries are automatically Localised

Automatic Localisation of particular queries is almost a no brainer, something that SEO’s have been subconsciously assuming for a while so it is nice that the leaked handbook actually gave substance to this belief.

If you think about your search query to Google as asking a human for something then you can see how some queries will automatically be localised. “Where is the bank?” Would always be assumed to mean that you were looking for a bank nearby to where the query was made, and Google will work the same way.

How can we use this insight? Well, if your site is not doing well in the SERPs, maybe take a look at your main search queries and question if they may be localised. Generally localised queries would be those that could point to facilities and services that are often provided by local companies rather than by national companies. In particular query how these queries would be localise in America – America has fewer national companies handling these kind of local queries as the country is too big. Google is an American organisation and its way of handling localised information is influenced by experience from ‘over the pond’.

Practically speaking, if your national company is not coming anywhere near the top of the SERPs for search relating to your market, check if your competition is from local companies, if it is then you need to get creative and find a way to localise your services.

Searches are categorised by intent

The Leaked handbook revealed that searches are broken down by intent. The Searcher seeks to “Do”, to “Go” or to “Know”. “Do” searches are those that are searched with an intent to do something on the targeted page, i.e. a search for “Buy iPhone 4s” is clearly a “Do” as the searcher wishes to buy an apple iphone. Searches for company names count as “Go” searches as the user is merely using the search engine as a stepping stone in navigation for something they haven’t bookmarked or can’t remember the exact URL. “Know” Searches are requests for information; so “Apple iphone 4s battery life” is fairly obvious.

Knowing the intent assigned to a search by Google is important as if your site content does not satisfy the intent behind a query then Google will not rank it well for that query. If your target keyword is one that Google thinks is a doing search, and your site only provides information then you probably won’t rank well.

The difficulty comes where search queries are ambiguous and how do we determine what the intent is. For example “Apple iPhone 4s” could be a purchasing inquiry or a request for information. We can research this keyword to make an educated guess as to the intent that Google has assigned to that particular phrase.

The first check is to see if Wikipedia is the first result. If it is then there is a very good chance the query is tagged as a “know” key phrase. Don’t forget that Wiki is often flagged as a “Vital” result so don’t trust only this. Instead take a look at the websites that do rank top. Don’t worry about the usual on-page assessments, instead check out the intent of their content, particularly in pages which are focussed on the phrase. If the top sites service that key term with information that is offering a service, then you can see that the query is probably flagged by Google as a “Do”, and you should adjust your own message accordingly.

The intents of some keywords can seem to be quite arbitrary and while there does seem to be a logical process behind it, it is not an exact science, for this reason you will always need to experiment and see what other sites are doing different to yours, and then cherry pick the main factors according to your own plan.