{"id":1540540,"date":"2024-07-30T09:59:28","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T13:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.practicalecommerce.com\/?p=1540540"},"modified":"2024-07-30T14:06:50","modified_gmt":"2024-07-30T18:06:50","slug":"3-tiered-index-hints-seo-link-value","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.practicalecommerce.com\/3-tiered-index-hints-seo-link-value","title":{"rendered":"3-Tiered Index Hints SEO Link Value"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leaked documentation from Google suggests that where the search giant stores a link to a web page determines, at least in part, the page’s authority.<\/p>\n

Google stores its index of web pages on a three-tiered hardware system, each with different processing speeds. The leak from Google’s engineering documents, first reported<\/a> by consultant Mike King, suggests a link’s authority depends on its storage tier \u2014 faster tiers equate to more authority.<\/p>\n

“It was something we already suspected, but data in the leak suggests that the value of a link relates to where the page that the link exists on is stored in Google’s index,” says<\/a> consultant Barry Adams, who helps publishers optimize articles for the Google News ecosystem, including Top Stories and Discover. He also noted that Google’s News algorithm processes content much faster than universal search.<\/p>\n

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Google stores its index of web page links across three hardware tiers. Links on the RAM tier likely have higher authority.<\/p><\/div>\n

“When an article is published, Google wants to show it in Top Stories as soon as possible because people want the latest news and updates. A lot of the processes that Google would perform as part of regular indexing and ranking of content don’t necessarily apply to News. To process News search results, Google has to take a few shortcuts along the way,” says Adams.<\/p>\n

Ted Kubaitis at SEO Tool Lab has tested<\/a> how quickly Google recognizes and incorporates new links into its rankings. So far, Google has taken at least three weeks to recognize and apply the authority of new backlinks to the rankings of web pages. News cycles are much faster.<\/p>\n

Google upended Yahoo years ago as the leading search engine by treating links as recommendations by web users and ranking pages accordingly. The more recommendations or links a web page has from other domains, the higher that page tends to rank. Google calls this “citation indexing.” The logic is circular. If all other ranking factors are equal, a link from a web page with many trustworthy links pointing to it has more authority than a page with no links.<\/p>\n

Storage Tiers<\/h3>\n

Google’s index of web pages resides on three hardware tiers:<\/p>\n