What is Google looking for?

Yes, Google is the place where most people (approximately 85% of the people in the UK) go to in order to find out information, buy something or checkout websites.

But specifically it’s a search engine, it’s job is to take the search term you type into it and bring back what it thinks are the most relevant results based on what you typed. In the old days it was very hit and miss, but now search engines are getting very good at interpreting what you want based on what you type.

So in order to understand what Google is looking  for what does Google want to bring back in it’s search results for its users?

One of the main answers is relevancy, after all, Google isn’t going to bring back a whole load of hotchpotch results that bear no resemblance to what you initially searched for, if it did, you would soon stop using it and find another search engine to use and the boys at Google would start to see their earnings fall (which they won’t want, at the time of writing this, Google has just its Q3 figs for 2011 and they turned over $10 Billion and made just under $3 Billion). The more relevant the results, the the quicker we find what we want and the more we use it.

Your job and our job as webmasters and SEO consultants is to look at the search terms that people use when they search for your products and services and interpret what they’re looking for and then give it to them. The relevant the page the higher you’ll appear in Google searches. Obviously you have to go through the optimisation route, but in essence make sure you’re giving the crowed what they want and Google will reward you.