Earn From Skills

We help professionals, small businesses, bloggers, extra income seekers to reach an interested audience, build trust and convert their skills to income!

Category: SEO

How Google uses data to train AI & index content in a granular manner

Posted on by M Pattabiraman

We discussed Google’s announcement of passage and sub-topic indexing and how to optimise for it. In the same announcement, they also mentioned they now can understand different segments of a video and return specific time stamps of relevant content to the user. How did Google get to this amazing stage? How did it train its AI to achieve this level of granularity? A discussion.

We will not discuss the technical aspects of the AI algorithm. Our focus here would be how Google got to this stage of discerning content. The first step is data and as we well know, we are the source!

Let us consider just a handful of example to appreciate how granular index was achieved. First, what is granular indexing? This just refers to Google’s ability to tell site A and site B apart; tell video A and video B apart; passage one and passage 10 in the same article apart; Time state 3:20 and 4:50 in the same video apart and so on.

1 The disavow tool

The first example I can think of the disavow tool in Google search console. What was once an integral part of the search console, (when it was called Google Webmaster tool prior May 2015) has now been moved to obscurity because of AI capabilities.

If we suscept a spammy or suspicious website has linked to our site, we can inform google about this. We could upload a set of all such spammy sites in a text file. Google happily got this information from tens of thousands of Webmaster for several years and fed it to their AI algorithm.

With access to so much data, they could tinker their AI code to near perfection and spot a good site from a spammy site. At that point they happily told webmasters manual disavowal was no longer necessary (although still available) and “AI would take care of it”

The granular indexing formula: Get data from users, use it as input, perfect the code and let it loose on the web.

This Twitter poll says it all!

2 Employing Quality Raters

The data they got from searchers and users was not enough! Google actually employed thousands of quality raters with extensive guidelines to test how the AI was coughing up results. The raters were trained to identify sites with authentic information especially in YMYL (your money or your life) niches like health and finance.

For example, if a website was claiming that the Earth was flat, it would never feature in scientific searches; if a website claims (to borrow an example from the actual guideline) that carrots can cure cancer, the site could even be removed entirely from the index.

Quality rates are used to evaluate author profiles, site privacy policy, conflict of interest etc. Once they got enough information to create a search pattern Google made an extraordinary announcement in late 2019.

3 Removing Manual Submission to Google News

This announcement shock those who wanted to “get into” Google News – a huge source of traffic and authority. Previously site owners had to apply for inclusion into Google News. Now the AI would decide which is a news site and which is not. In fact, the AI is so good it can differentiate between article A and B from the same site – A could feature in Google News and B will not. Here are two examples of this.

Screenshot of freefincal articles appearing on Google News
Screenshot of freefincal articles appearing on Google News
Brief Google News appearance of freefincal articles as seen from search console screenshot
Brief Google News appearance of freefincal articles as seen from search console screenshot

A search for “freefincal” on the Google News tab occasionally shows actual articles instead of references to freefincal or its author in news sites already on Google News. This is a precise example of granular indexing.

Other examples

  1. Google Maps understands the nature of a business from its reviews.
  2. Youtube now can understand comments and offers a choice of automated responses to the channel owner.
  3. They study likes; dislikes and comments to understand what videos would keep viewers engaged on YouTube longer
  4. Gmail can now understand what emails are about and offer automated responses and autocomplete

Passage indexing; video key moment indexing, sub-topic indexing are all part of this progression arc. The future is existing but also scary. This is the reason why they say “data is the new oil”. Google and Facebook stocks holders are laughing themselves to check on their demat accounts!

Posted in SEO

Passage SEO: How to optimise for passage and sub topic ranking

Posted on by M Pattabiraman

Google announced on Oct 15th 2020 that it can now rank specific passages (paragraphs) and sub-topics of articles and present them for specific queries. What does this mean and how do we optimise for “Passage SEO”? A discussion.

Every piece of content we produce should try and solve a question or problem our readers may have. If we approach every content with this mindset most of our SEO effort is already accomplished.

It is well known that articles with questions in the titles do well. For example: “Nifty vs Sensex*: Which should I choose for passive investing?” This is a common question index investors have and the title makes it clear what entities are being compared and why. * The Nifty and Sensex are Indian stock market indices.

Optimising for Sub-topics

If the article title addresses one question a reader is likely to have, we can make an article more useful by adding additional and associated questions as sub-topics (with H2 headings).

For example, a reader looking to understand the difference between the Nifty and Sensex would first look for a basic definition of these; how they are constructed etc.

As the reader goes through your text, imagine what additional questions would arise:

  1. How different were their returns in the last five years?
  2. How do the top ten stocks differ in these? Has there ever been a time when the compositions were significantly different?
  3. Which has more day to day price fluctuations?
  4. Which has more concentration risk?

These are natural questions that crop up as the reader progresses through the article. Addressing these questions without worrying “optimising for a specific keyword” is the best way we can be helpful to our readers and automatically this is the best way to ensure the content related to each sub-topics is showcased for specific queries by Google.

Passage SEO

The logic here is the same. One passage (paragraph) should naturally and logically follow another. The image shown below is a screenshot from Google’s announcement (link in the caption)

Passage SEO example: Screenshot from Googles article "How AI is powering a more helpful Google"
Passage SEO example: Screenshot from Googles article “How AI is powering a more helpful Google”

For example, as you address the differences between the Nifty and Sensex, a reader might wonder, “what about the Nifty Next 50, Nifty 100?”. These natural questions can simply be addressed as a paragraph as shown in the example below.

Concentration risk in the Nifty 100? The Nifty 100 which includes an additional 50 stocks has relatively lower concentration risk. For example …..

So when someone searches for Nifty 100 composition or Nifty 100 concentration risk, the above section can be directly shown in the featured snippet (with the relevant link). Even though we mentioned Nifty 100 only in passing and our article was about Sensex and Nifty, Google could showcase the relevant passage from an article instead of a Nifty 100 specific article.

Summary

To optimise for sub-topic ranking and passage ranking it is important we think like a reader who has no clue about the topic of our article.

The logical sequence of how you would explain the subject to a reader should shine through in the article as sub-topics (with an H2 sub-heading if necessary) and as clear passages.

Each passage should convey one distinct message but should also be interconnected to the narrative so that it does not stand out.

The natural way to do this better is to become an expert in our subject matter by having a clear understanding of “what our readers want?”. Our course “How to get people to pay for your skills” aka “Earn from Skills” teaches you how to do this step by step with over ten hours of video content. Learn more about the course, and watch the first video for free: How to build a second income source that will last a lifetime

Posted in SEO