Google has yet again succeeded in throwing us a curve ball with the decision to demote some of its ranking systems. On 21st April 2023, the search giant updated its documented ranking systems page, taking out a total of four ranking systems. These systems include the following:
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide
- Mobile-Friendly Ranking System
- Page Speed System
- Secure Sites System
Turns Out They Are Still Important Ranking Factors
While three of the above ranking systems were completely taken off the list, the Page Experience System has been excluded from the main list but not added to the retired list.
This update caused many people to wonder whether these systems were ever important! However, it seems that this change comes in an effort to correct the perception of how these factors figure in the ranking algorithm.
Google continues to consider Page Experience and the rest as important ranking signals, even when they are no longer considered to be actual ranking systems.
The Search Giant Has Also Updated Its Content Guide
Apart from the changes we see in the ranking systems list, Google has also updated its guide to creating quality content – Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content. The updated guide states that the ranking systems are designed to offer information to benefit people, and not so you can use them to rank higher in the search engine result pages.
The guide also explains how to:
- Self-assess your content
- Provide a great page experience
- Focus on people-first content
- Avoid creating search engine-first content
So What Does It All Mean?
Despite all that Google has to say, the fact remains that quality content simply isn’t enough! You have to design your pages as per Google to ensure it gets crawled and ranked. There are a number of quality pages out there that have quality content but are still neglected by Google because they fail to present their content in the format that the search engine demands of its high-ranking pages.