In this tutorial, you will discover many SEO insights that can be understood from reading Google Patents.
This series is in honour of the great pioneer Bill Slawski and its avid followers such as Koray Gubur.
The Most Interesting Google Patents for SEO
Here is a list of the most interesting Google patents to start reading first for SEO professionals are:
- The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine (Original PageRank)
- Multi-stage query processing system and method for use with tokenspace repository (Query Processing)
- Document Scoring Based on Query Analysis (Ranking based on Query Interpretation)
- Ranking documents based on user behavior and/or feature data (Reasonable Surfer)
- Batch Optimized Render and Fetch Architecture (Rendering)
- Scheduler for search engine crawler (Crawling)
- Systems and methods for determining document freshness
- Phrase-based indexing in an information retrieval system
- Synonym identification based on co-occurring terms (Hummingbird)
- Ranking Search Results by Navneet Panda (Panda)
- Contextual Estimation of Link Information Gain
- Modifying search result ranking based on implicit user feedback (Short click, Long Click)
- User-context-based search engine (macro/micro context, possibly rankbrain)
- Search result ranking and presentation (semantic/entity oriented search)
Google Concepts Definitions
Google Crawling Patents
- Scheduler for search engine crawler
- Limiting requests by web crawlers to a web host
- Scheduling Resource Crawls
- Method and Appartus for managing a backlog of pending URL crawls
- Minimizing visibility of stale content in web searching including revising web crawl intervals of documents
- Managing items in crawl schedule
- Web crawler scheduler that utilizes sitemaps from websites
- Anchor tag indexing in a web crawler system
- Managing URLs
- Near-duplicate document detection for web crawling
- Efficient Crawling Through URL Ordering
- Generating equivalence classes and rules for associating content with document identifiers
- System and method for enabling website owner to manage crawl rate in a website indexing system
- Search engine with multiple crawlers sharing cookies
- Incremental Crawling
Google Rendering Patents
- Batch Optimized Render and Fetch Architecture
- Speeding up document loading
- Detecting and processing invisible elements within a web page
Google Information Retrieval Patents
Google Document Processing Patents
- Resource size-based content item selection (Page layout algorithm)
- Automatically Determining a Size for a Content Item for a Web Page
Google Scoring and Ranking Patent
- Ranking Search Results by Navneet Panda (Panda)
- How Google Knows if a Document is Fresh?
- Document Scoring Based on Query Analysis
- How Google Uses History Data in Ranking (History Component)
- How Google Uses Anchors in Ranking Search Results
- The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine (Original PageRank)
- Ranking documents based on user behavior and/or feature data (Reasonable Surfer)
- Freshness based ranking (Query Deserves Freshness)
- Contextual Estimation of Link Information Gain
Google SERP Features and Presentation Patents
- Classifying Search Results
- Search Results Annotations at Google
- Ranking Rich Results for SEO (With Structured Data Examples)
Google Indexing Patents
- Predictive-based Clustering with representative redirect targets
- De-Duplication at Google: Using the aged of Portions in a Document
- Phrase-based indexing in an information retrieval system
Google Image Patents
- Image SEO: How the Google Image Search Engine Works
- How Google Selects the Most Representative Image of a Set
- Image Retrieval: Information Retrieval in (Google) Image Search Engine
- Clustering Queries for Image Search at Google
- Query Categorization Based on Image Results
- How Google Displays Images Within Web Search Results?
Google Query Processing Patents
- Multi-stage query processing system and method for use with tokenspace repository
- Synonym identification based on search quality
- Implicit Question Query Identification
- Identification of semantic units from within a search query
- Methods and Systems for Adjusting a Scoring Measure Based on Query Breadth
- Query rewriting with entity detection
- Synonym identification based on search quality
- Using concepts as contexts for query term substitutions
- Context scoring adjustments for answer passages
- Synonym identification based on co-occurring terms (Hummingbird)
- Query generation using structural similarity between documents
- Methods and systems for efficient query rewriting (Amit Singhal and al)
- Query Augmentation (Krishna Bharat and al)
Google Patents Related to De-Duplication
- Predictive-based Clustering with representative redirect targets
- De-Duplication at Google: Using the aged of Portions in a Document
Industry Specific Patents
Who To Follow to Learn About Google Patents
- Bill Slawski (RIP)
- Koray Gubur
- Olaf Kopp
- JC Chouinard
- Abdulrahman Henedy
- Roger Montti
- Mike King
SEO Strategist at Tripadvisor, ex- Seek (Melbourne, Australia). Specialized in technical SEO. Writer in Python, Information Retrieval, SEO and machine learning. Guest author at SearchEngineJournal, SearchEngineLand and OnCrawl.