Speaker 1: 0:54

Hello and welcome to SEO is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of the SEO intelligence platform, keywordfewplayerscom, where we help you discover the questions people ask online and learn how to optimise your content to build traffic and authority. I've been in SEO and online marketing for over 20 years and I'm here to share the wealth of knowledge, hints and tips I've amassed over that time. Hello, welcome back to SEO is not that hard. Hard. It's me here, ed Dawson, hosting, as usual, and today we're going to get into a topic that might sound a bit technical at first, but it's actually quite a clever mechanism that helps search engines stay fair and effective. In it. This is based on a Google patent named changing a rank of a document by applying a rank transition function, and I'll put a link to this patent in the show notes so you can go and read the actual patent. But sounds really dry, doesn't it? Changing the rank of a document by applying a rank transition function. Um, but before you kind of feel your eyes glaze over, um, this is a patent that can explain some of the effects you'll see when you're trying to rank content in Google, and you'll see the reasons why Google have put it in and also why it's there also to try and catch up people who are deliberately trying to manipulate the search engine result, which, to be fair, all SEOs are to a certain extent, but it's really about trying to discover those who are gaming it really hard. But anyway, let's let's get into the topic and what this patent actually covers.

Speaker 1: 2:26

So, first of all, we need to understand what document ranking is in SEO. So, at its core, search engine optimization is about getting your content to rank well in search results. Now, normally when we think about ranking, we imagine somewhat of a static number. So your page is in position three, five, maybe ten, maybe position one, but obviously search engines are incredibly sophisticated. They're constantly tweaking and fine-tuning their algorithms to ensure that what they believe is the best and most relevant content will appear at the top.

Speaker 1: 2:57

Now, one of these methods is this idea of a rank transition function. So what this really means is, instead of flipping a switch that immediately moves your document's rank up or down when it re-evaluates your page, your document a rank transition function will make that change happen slowly and gradually over time. So this means that a that a rank rank transition function, is really like a smoothing tool. So imagine, right, you're adjusting the volume on your radio. You don't just suddenly go from like very low volume to high volume. You crank it up slowly so your ears can get used to it until you get to the point that you want to be at and in seo, this is essentially what a rank transition function does it. It does something very similar.

Speaker 1: 3:45

Where an algorithm decides a page is rank should change, maybe because of new signals or as a response to practices or to an algorithm change. It doesn't just immediately jump to the new position. It transitions gradually. So this gradual transition can work in two directions. It can be an upward transition, so if it thinks your page has improved in quality or relevance, its rank will slowly improve. Or a downward transition. So this is obviously the opposite. If it thinks your page is being manipulative or its quality is declining, its rank will drop gradually rather than a sudden drop, jump or jarring manner.

Speaker 1: 4:19

Now why do Google do this? What is the point of a rank transition function? Well, there's a few reasons. The first is to determine manipulative practices. So if someone's trying to game the system, say by buying a ton of links or stuffing keywords, the sudden spike in ranking could be exploited. A gradual change makes it harder for such manipulative techniques to be well lasting and also to be so obvious. So google don't want people to work out oh I made this change and this thing happened. Because if you do that by constant testing and repetition of testing, you can then work out oh I just need to do this and I can see this. Or if I've had a downward, sudden downward drop, oh, I can reverse that out and fix the problem.

Speaker 1: 5:01

They're trying to make it harder for you to predict ranking adjustments based on the actions you take. Secondly, they want to smooth out volatility. So you know, signals are changing all the time. Document, you know, page might get any backlink, it might update its content or the experience changes in user behavior. So if it gradually transitions the rank, search, the search changes avoid sudden, real, dramatic shifts that could destabilize the search results. It helps maintain a level of stability and user trust in their search results, because if users come to search results and they see constant, massive changes all the time, it can be hard for them to um, you know, necessarily believe in that google knows what it's doing. Essentially, um, you know, you might find that when you're researching a topic you're constantly going back to almost the same Google results to try and find pages, and if they keep disappearing and all over the place, it can be very hard for people to trust that. Thirdly, it encourages continuous improvement. So if gradual changes happen, website owners have the chance to make further improvements and respond to performance data over time.

Speaker 1: 6:02

It's not like an all-or-nothing approach. Small tweaks can help nudge a page's rank in the right direction over time. So how does it work in practice? Well, imagine you've been working hard on a page about the best broadband for gamers and you've built a solid piece of content, optimized all your on-page elements and you might even manage to get hold of a few backlinks. The search engine algorithm may decide this page deserves a better position, but instead of moving it from, say, position 10 to position 5 overnight, it will gradually adjust this rank over several days or weeks and during this time the page might oscillate between position 6, 7, 8, 6 again, before finally setting at five. So and this slow transition prevents abrupt ranking shifts and it also provides time for further data collection, because google's continuously collecting new data all the time and it may decide. You know that this position boost it thought of originally is not really wants to be and it can help just keep it in the balance of where it wants to be.

Speaker 1: 7:05

On the opposite side, if a page whoever's looking after that page starts doing manipulative practices, the ranking might slowly decline over time. Again, this is the opposite. So the gradual demotion prevents the page from plummeting instantly and it also means that it's harder for that person doing manipulation to think oh, that thing I've done is really bad, I will remove that. Okay, it's trying to sort of deceive you into working out what's going on now. Also, within this patent it talks about where it might actually sometimes do the opposite of what you might expect. So if, for example, it sees something that gives a real big positive boost, all of a sudden it might actually drop you quite sharply.

Speaker 1: 7:50

So say, you're ranking position five and this changes that had happened might move you position one. It might all of a sudden drop you down to position 30, 40 or even or even worse, because it's giving you a chance to see if you are going to remove whatever it was you did because, um, you did it to minute for manipulative purposes. You're monitoring the page, you see a change and gives you that chance to go oh, I've been caught, I'll remove everything. I'll disavow my links or remove the links. You know you could have a massive influx of links all of a sudden, which can happen naturally and that can give a very big boost. But it can also happen unnaturally. So say, you got this big, this big, whole load of links coming all of a sudden. It might decide that's weird, let's just drop. Drop it all of a sudden, see if the site takes any action, and if you don't take any action, it might go. Well, let's trust them, let's let's see that as um real and then it will all this and put you back up into a real hot position.

Speaker 1: 8:47

So what does this mean? As us, as people are interested in seo and trying to rank our sites better? Obviously we know search engines are always fine-tuning their assessments. So this means we need to be consistent. Consistency is key. Instead of chasing overnight success, focus on steady quality improvement, same stuff. I always say resilience is important, not you know? I've been through so many ups and downs. You have to be resilient.

Speaker 1: 9:11

Small fluctuations in rankings might be due to these gradual transitions rather than drastic changes. But what you do see certain changes all of a sudden. It might just be that being you're being tested did all those links that you organically got? Naturally, it could just be google trying to figure out if they were real or not. So sometimes you just have to hold your nerve, and I've seen it when I've made changes to pages. All of a sudden you will disappear for a day or so and that's really unnerving. But sometimes just hold fire, wait, have patience and see where it comes back.

Speaker 1: 9:40

And that monitoring matters. Keep an eye on your performance metrics over long periods to see the full effect of gradual changes. This means keeping an eye on your Google Analytics or whatever analytics you're using, google Search Console. Keep an eye on that. Keep an eye on those metrics around indexing, around visibility, about average positions, all those kind of things that you can get from that Search Console data. And if you're trying to manipulate rankings, you've just got to watch out. You know that this whole system of transitional ranking changes is to try and deter you, so it makes it hard for you to test. It's designed to make it hard for you to test. It's also designed for you to sometimes almost give yourself away. So you've just got to be the same as those who aren't trying to do it the white hat way and just be patient. Now, of course, no system's perfect.

Speaker 1: 10:37

One potential criticism of the rank transition function is that it might delay the recognition of proper, genuine improvements. If you're making significant updates to a page, you might have to wait longer to see the full effect of your ranking, which is frustrating. However, this delay is the trade-off for the stability and the protection against manipulation that this, that this patent and this, these functions, are trying to achieve. And, yeah, that's the frustrating thing on the side. You know, because these changes happen gradually, it can be very challenging to pinpoint exactly which update caused a shift in ranking, which is why thorough testing and monitoring and keeping an eye on what you changed when and then what the effects were over time is even more important for understanding SEO. So, yeah, just to wrap up this concept of changing a rank of a document by applying a rank transition function it's a very sophisticated way of the search engines trying to balance stability with adaptability, really, and by gradually adjusting pages' ranks, it protects the integrity of the search results, deters manipulation and encourages people more to focus on continuous improvement rather than fast, easy wins. So, yeah, it doesn't really change anything any advice I've ever given in terms of how you should focus on quality content over time, have patience and just trust in the end that it will work out.

Speaker 1: 12:01

This is one of the patents, one of the algorithms in Google that really means that's really the only way to do it. Um, you know those incremental gains over time and understanding that it's slow and steady. It's the, it's the tortoise and the hare the old fable. You know the hare might get there, you know rush around fast and think he's going to win, but then he loses because you know the tortoise, gradually over time, just gets there in the end, you know. So it goes back to that, that approach. So anyway, that's it for today. I hope this has probably helped to explain some of the effects you might see with your content, and rank changes over time certainly does for me.

Speaker 1: 12:42

If you're getting value from the podcast, you're enjoying it. Please go to rate this podcastcom slash seo. That's rate this podcastcom slash seo. Leave a comment. It's really lovely to receive comments and reviews and you know they help the out. With the algorithm, the helpers get to more people and help, help me help more people, and so please do that if you can rate this podcastcom slash seo, and until next time. You know, remember, stay curious, keep optimizing and remember seo is not that hard when you understand the basics. Thanks for listening. It means a lot to me.

Speaker 1: 13:16

This is where I get to remind you where you can connect with me and my seo tools and services. You can find links to all the links I mentioned here in the show notes. Just remember, with all these places where I use my name, that Ed is spelled with two Ds. You can find me on LinkedIn and Blue Sky. Just search for Ed Dawson on both.

Speaker 1: 13:31

You can record a voice question to get answered on the podcast. The link is in the show notes. You can try our SEO intelligence platform, keywords People Use at keywordspeopleusecom, where we can help you discover the questions and keywords people are asking online, poster those questions and keywords into related groups so you know what content you need to build topical authority and finally, connect your Google Search Console account for your sites so we can crawl and understand your actual content, find what keywords you rank for and then help you optimize and continually refine your content Targeted, personalized advice to keep your traffic growing. If you're interested in learning more about me personally or looking for dedicated consulting advice, then visit wwweddawsoncom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO. Is Not that Hard.