For those of us that have worked in the defense industry there is a level of security called Secret Compartmentalized Information or SCI. I'm sure that the Google Algorithm team is compartmentalized similar to some Top Secret Military Black Project. The develop teams are all working on small portions of the algorithm and not a one of them understands how the complete algorithm actually works. There are a very select few highly trusted engineers that have access to the completed code, just like a Black Project. These people you could count on one hand.

All the SEO consultants on the planet that think they know how the algorithm works are just guessing. Any SEO consultant who tells you they understand how that algorithm works is blowing smoke. If anybody outside of Google got access to the source code they would be rich. That is a more closely guarded secret than MicroSoft's source code.

The one thing that I do think is carved in stone is this: Content is King. If your site has good solid content then the Google Search Engine will rank it highly regardless of any other factor.


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The algorithm, actually algorithms are pretty complex already for the one person to understand them completely. And I am sure they are patent protected.

What is the reason for stealing this from google? They change all the time.

The point I was trying to make was that there is no single SW engineer at Google that could walk out and start his own SEO business claiming he has the complete picture because of the complexity and more than likely the compartmentalization of the Search Algorithm(s).

The second point I was trying to make is there is no SEO consultant can claim to know anything more than a good guess as to how the algorithm works. Any SEO consultant that claims they understand how Google works should be avoided.

You brought up another good point and that is the continual process improvement of the algorithm(s). Google does this in the best interest of the search results as well as the best interest of their stock holders.

This is the typical scenario that RackSolutions goes through. We work to achieve the best organic results that we can achieve and then supplement the results with PPC marketing. However when there is a refinement in the algorithm it has the potential of hurting our organic search results. Therefore we have to increase the daily budget of the PPC marketing until our organic search results recover.

This is all done to benefit the end user of Google's Search Engine, and I applaud them for having an outstanding product and service. However I would bet money that with each algorithm refinement their PPC marketing revenue increases for a given period of time.

Google does have a secret sauce, and a number of areas to it. However, the bulk and base of their search algorithm and systems are published in academic papers.

Are they published online somewhere?

http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&lr=&sa=G&oi=qs&q=pagerank+author:l-page
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&lr=&sa=G&oi=qs&q=pagerank+author:s-brin

http://www.usenix.org/event/osdi06/tech/chang/chang_html/
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1165389.945450

Either way, following google's webmaster guidelines for the search engine is all you need.
SEOs are another story.