SEOMoz created the first and second comprehensive search ranking factors document. We now have a new one, a shorter one, from HuoMah.com.
Dave lists out dozens and dozens of factors and adds commentary around them. Here are some of them, without the commentary:
PageRank (or relative nodal link valuation)Link text (internal and external)Link relevance (global and page)Also see Temporal, Personalized PageRank and Phrase factors.Page TITLE tagMeta-description tagDocument inception/age dataLink velocityLink ageViral/Current news (QDF)Time of year (niche trends)Content update rateDomain historyInbound links (global)Outbound linksNamed entities (products, brand, author)Contact information (also important for geographic signals)Location of client deviceLocation of webpage hostingContact / location informationInbound/outbound link geo-factorsLinguistic indicators (language and nuances)Heading (H1-5)BoldItalicListsFont attributes (size, color)Related phrase ratiosCategorization of content (clusters)Occurrences (probabilistic)Duplication dampening (filters)Personalization (phrase based)Link analysis (inbound)Global site relevanceTerm proximity (for multi-term queries)Image tagging (in content segment/related terms)Search HistoryWeb history (pages/sites we visit)Query revision (and analysis)Search intent (informational, navigational)Explicit data (favourites, reader,wiki)Interaction with advertisingSurfing frequency/ time of dayPersonalized PageRank (yahoo and google)SERP and document interactionsDuplicate issues (structural/content)Link devaluations (segmentation, link text, recips)Poor architecture/codingReviewer penaltiesRedundant meta-data (such as meta-descriptions)Canonical / URL issuesServer reliability (can be de-indexed)Phrase based detectionCloakingBoilerplateDomain historyQuery analysisNetwork proxy detectionLink based (link spam and excessive recips)Client type (browser, mobile)Toolbars and browser (Google Suggest, web history)Application focus (email, instant messenger, RSS etc..)
Exhausting list, but it is nice to have an updated version in one place.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
This article was written earlier this week and scheduled to go live April 15th.
