Google Suggests – How does it work?
For a long time now the majority of SEO’s have been led to believe that Google Suggests is based on keyword search volume. Because of this many try to manipulate it to suggest the keywords they want and to be honest I’m really tired of these guys messing up the search volumes on keyword data.
Google has stated that Google Suggests is based on keyword popularity, this term can be easily read as search volume but in reality Google are not stupid, they don’t want people manipulating data easily so they use an algorithm for it. The algorithm itself is a ranking algorithm, possibly similar to that of the organic search algorithm.
Through testing I have seen that the algorithm uses 3 factors at least when ranking each keyword, these are Content, Anchor Text and Search Volume. Search Volume seems to play the smallest role within this algorithm with mentions of the keyword within content and anchor text playing a much larger role.
The problem with manipulating the data in Google Suggests this far on is that due to the mass volume of content on the web, adding more content with new keywords is not going to make too much difference on the money making keywords. Another reason why the method is so effective is because the long tail versions of keywords contain the short tail keywords so long tail shouldn’t outrank its partnering short tail keyword (some keywords have exceptions), which gives the illusion of search volume playing a key factor.
At the end of the day Google Suggests as mentioned above has got to the stage where the majority of it cannot be messed with so please stop ruining my search volumes (more than Google already does).
P.S If you have seen any additional ranking factors for Google Suggests please let me know.
