How does Google use HTML tags to enhance the search engine?

Question

I know that Google’s search algorithm is mainly based on pagerank. However, it also does analysis and uses the structure of the document H1, H2,

Answer 1

SEO has become almost a religion to some people where they obsess about minutiae. Frankly, I'm not convinced that all this effort is justified.

My advice? Ignore what so-called pundits say and just follow Google's guidelines.

You might be looking for an academic answer but honestly, this isn't an academic question beyond the very basics of how Web indexing works. The reality of a modern page indexing and ranking algorithm is far more complex.

You may want to look at one of the earlier works on search engines. Note the authors' names. You may also want to read Google Patent application 20050071741.

These general principles aside, Google's search algorithm is constantly tweaked based on actual and desired results. The exact workings are a closely guarded secret just to make it harder for people to game the system. Much of the "advice" or descriptions on how Google's search algorithm works is pure supposition.

So, apart from having a title and having well-formed and valid HTML, I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for.

Answer 2

You can also try searching the 'Computer Science' section of arXiv: http://arxiv.org for "search engine" and the various terms that others have suggested.

It contains many academic papers, all freely available... hopefully some of them will be relevant to your research. (Of course the caveat of validating any paper's content applies.)

Answer 3

Google very deliberately doesn't give away too much information about its search algorithm, so it's unlikely you will find a definitve answer or academic paper that confirms this. If you're interested from an SEO point of view, just write your pages so they are good for humans and the robots will like them too.

To make a page good for humans, you SHOULD use tags such as h1, h2 and so on to create a hierarchical page outlay... a bit like this...

h1 "Contact Us" ...h2 "Contact Details" ......h3 "Telephone Numbers" ......h3 "Email Addresses" ...h2 "How To Find Us" ......h3 "By Car" ......h3 "By Train"

The difficulty with your question is that if you put something in your h1 tag hoping that it would increase your position in Google, but it didn't match up with other content on your page, you could look like you are spamming. Similarly, if your page is made up of too many headings and not enough actual content, you could look like you are spamming. It's not as simple as add a h1 and h2 tag and you'll go up! That's why you need to write websites for humans, not robots.

Answer 4

Check out http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue3/pan.html http://www.springerlink.com/content/l22811484243r261/

Some time spent on scholar.google.com might help you find what you are looking for

Answer 5

Like cletus said follow the google guidelines.

I did a few tests came to the conclusion that title, image alt and h tags the most important. Also worth to mention is google adsense. I had the feeling if you implement these, the rank of your site increase.

Answer 6

I have found this paper:

A New Study on Using HTML Structures to Improve Retrieval

however it is an old paper 1999,

still looking for more recent papers.