Google NEWS - The Hilltop Algorithm - Uncovering The Real Story Behind Google And The Florida Update

by Garry Grant

Few events on the Internet have stirred as much controversy and confusion than Google's most resent change nicked named Florida - a plan that knocked thousands of companies out of their top positions in search engine results.

There has been no shortage of accusations about Google's intentions. The most common charge leveled against the search engine giant is that it is trying to increase revenues by forcing companies to buy keywords.

In the midst of this firestorm, we decided to do a little sleuth work to find out what really happened. What we found was that an algorithm named Hilltop was responsible for shaking up the entire online community.

A bit of background first.

PAGE RANK DEFINED:Condensed version
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page strong as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Google knew that there were two problems with PageRank: it had difficulty filtering out spam sites and it did an inadequate job differentiating between sites that had relevant and irrelevant information.

Krishna Bharat at Compaq Systems Research Center and George A. Mihaila, a professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto came up with a new algorithm to fix the problem: Hilltop.

What follows is a VERY simplified explanation of how Hilltop works.

Old Google Ranking Formula={(1-d)+a (RS)} * {(1-e)+b (PR * fb)}

New Google Ranking Formula={(1-d)+a (RS)} * {(1-e)+b (PR * fb)} * {(1-f)+c (LS)}

Google quickly found that the Hilltop algorithm also had flaws. So Google created a two-step search process that combines PageRank technology and the Hilltop algorithm.

So how do companies continue to enjoy top rankings on Google?

Getting top rankings on Google depends on meeting the criteria of PageRank and Hilltop. Therefore, companies have to receive significant numbers votes or quality links from authority sites (PageRank) and have meaningful / relevant hypertext links (Hilltop) inbound to their web pages. Just as it has always been, Content is critical and linking is now more important that ever.

Two Conclusions can be drawn from our research:

1. Google is not trying to force companies to buy keywords; it is simply trying to improve its algorithm.
   
2. The search engine optimization methodology and strategies used to achieve top placements just became significantly more complicated with the addition of Hilltop

With Google handling 75 to 85 percent of all search requests, companies doing business on the Web must retain top rankings in the search engines in order to survive. And that means making sure that your firm satisfies the criteria of the two algorithms.