2. How Google Works
Google, like many other search engines today, has moved beyond simply counting the number of times a term appears on a Web page (or in its metadata) in order to determine its relative "rank" in the results set. Instead, it examines all aspects of a page's content (as well as the content of the web sites that link to it) using sophisticated text-matching techniques. Google's PageRank system also determines a site’s relative standing by taking into account the following:
1) the number of links to the Web page from other (external) sites
2)
the relative “importance” of
the sites making the link.
Harvard researchers should understand that some scholarly and highly relevant Web pages may appear further down the Google results list, not because they are less scholarly or relevant, but simply because others have outranked them in terms of keywords and referral links. Scholars should also be aware that Google runs search relevant ads above and next to their official results.
