Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Here's an interesting video from Google about the ways in which search has evolved since back in 1998 when Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page wrote "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" and created the pagerank algorithm that would lead to Google's initial success.  Instead of relying on meta-keywords (specific categorising keywords included in the code of a site, which were becoming increasingly abused by spammers) they focused on determining the importance of a page by using a number of factors, the most important being the number of other websites that linked to it.  The logic being that a site with 50 other sites linking to it was likely to be more valuable than one with 5 external links. 

The technological evolution of that algorithm has been rapid, (which keeps those of us involved in SEO on our toes) and this video gives a good overview of some of the inspiration for new search features (google news search was inspired by the events on 9/11 for example).  Amit Singhal's indication of the future of search towards the end of the video points towards a focus on genuine informational need searches, which in turn reinforces the fact that website content which shows authority, relevance, knowledge and expertise is the road to ranking well on google in the future - couple that with regular updates and the social presence to aid relationship marketing, and you've got a head start. Enjoy the video!

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 7.0.14!