
If you are interested in SEO, you must have heard of the concept of popularity. You have also found that there is food and drink on the subject. Today, let’s go back to the basics and try to clarify together the notion of popularity, at the heart of Google’s algorithm.
Academic work at the origin of Google
Netlinking was originally born from university work carried out by the two founders of Google. Indeed, we owe Larry Page and Sergey Brin the publication in 1998 of The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, which is based, among other things, on the following two premises:
- technology cannot interpret text and measure its quality as a human operator would
- understanding a text by computer requires very high computer resources and is expensive
Their work, therefore, focuses on alternatives to improve the relevance of existing engines without granting themselves enormous computing power. And all their analyzes start from a brilliant intuition: what if popularity were the key to relevance?
A popular page is an interesting page
Let’s take a concrete example, which is somewhat newsworthy because liquid (and salty) water has been discovered on Mars. A freelancer is sent to a high-level astrophysics conference by an online magazine that can hardly afford specialized journalists.
This journalist must interview an astrophysical cador but he has no idea of the legitimacy of the various speakers and cannot go on the net to find out. This afternoon, professors Tournesol and Augustin are available. The best solution to decide on the relevance of the two speakers? Show up at their respective conferences, which take place at the same time, and see which of the two attracts the most people! The one that attracts the most visitors must be a big name in astrophysics.
Well, the same goes for Larry Page and Sergei Brin. They know that their engine is as ignorant as the freelancer and therefore decide that between two web pages whose content seems roughly similar in the eyes of their computer program, the page with the greatest number of links must be the most relevant. both. The notion of popularity, so essential in American schools and the scientific community, is being introduced for the first time in search engine rankings.

Popularity: not all audiences are created equal
Our freelancer can be wrong. In fact, not all audiences are created equal. Visiting the two rooms again, he finds that the first, the busiest, is occupied by young people: some are dissipated, others have fallen asleep. While in the next room, less full, the assembly seems much more learned: attentive spectators, of a certain age, most of whom wear a participant badge. Inquiries, it turns out that Professor Tournesol has a chair of astrophysics at the University of this city, and he encouraged his students to come against the promise of a good grade. He is actually much less known to the scientific community than his colleague Mr. Augustin.
This situation can also occur within the framework of a web page. Not all links are created equal! Several factors come into play, such as:
- the authority of the site that hosts a link to your page, its popularity, the trust placed in it…
- the theme of the page (and more generally of the site) which houses the link
Google’s algorithm must take into account the value of each link by answering the right questions. Is the site hosting the link serious and trustworthy? Does it address a related theme? Is it visited by many Internet users? Is it popular and frequently cited elsewhere? Is it itself well referenced?

A scientist who is published in journals like Science and Nature is more legitimate in his discipline than another researcher who is content to write for the local newspaper. Similarly, it is normal to consider that a link published on a site like Lemonde.fr is worth more than an obscure blog that is never visited. Each page is therefore assigned a value synthesized by the famous PageRank, the algorithm dedicated to analyzing the links between all the pages of the web
What should we remember about the notion of popularity on Google?
The notion of popularity has been at the heart of Google’s success from the start, bringing better relevance without exploding infrastructure costs. With the popularity allowing to improve the positioning of a page, it is normal that the SEO professionals have appropriated this dimension: the net linking becomes an essential lever to reinforce its visibility on Google. We will deepen these analyzes and the concept of networking in the weeks and months to come, by focusing on analysis solutions to identify relevant sites to host links, by helping you to better organize your site to optimize your internal networking, by enlightening you on many other aspects related to net linking and popularity on Google.
The short answer is no. Google search results vary depending on the computer. There are numerous factors that influence the Google search results that you see. Google strives to provide the most relevant results for individual users.
Google’s search suggestions are based on the most popular queries at the time. The algorithm analyzes people’s searches all over the world and recommends the most popular searches to other users.
Google’s success is thought to have stemmed from its desire and ability to provide higher-quality results for each user. Understanding search intent and locating the most accurate and relevant websites that match each query have enabled Google to differentiate itself from the competition…. Google provides simple, better results.
According to Google, PageRank calculates the importance of a website by counting the number and quality of links to that page. The underlying premise is that more important websites are more likely to receive links from other websites.
Location, personalization, and algorithm variations are the primary causes of users receiving varying results in Google. Because Google’s goal is to provide the most accurate and relevant results for each individual search engine user, the variations are entirely intentional.
Google first electrified the online world by developing the best search engine on the Web. Google’s lightning-fast and mostly accurate search results have propelled the company to the forefront of the search engine race – no small feat given that search is the second-most common activity on the Internet, trailing only email use.
Google PageRank (Google PR) is one of the methods used by Google to determine the relevance or importance of a page. Important pages get a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear near the top of search results. Google PageRank (PR) is a scale of 0 to 10…. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the higher your Google Pagerank.
Page rank is significant because it is one of the factors that a search engine, such as Google, considers when deciding which results to display at the top of its search engine listings – where they can be easily seen. (While PageRank is a Google trademark, other search engines employ similar techniques.)
Step 1: Confirm that you are on this Google PR Checker page (https://smallseotools.com/google-pagerank-checker), which is most likely where you are now. Step 2: In the space provided, enter the URL of the page you want to check. Step 3: Select the “Check Page Rank” option. The tool will immediately return the results.
What causes changes in Google search results? … The broader answer necessitates a look at the specific keyword search phrase, how the search is done, where the search is done, the type of device used (desktop, tablet, phone), and the Google Search Engine’s ongoing evolution.
Moz’s domain authority, abbreviated as DA, is a metric. The scores range from 1 to 100 and are intended to predict how likely a website is to appear in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Only a live rank checker can help you check your SEO rankings on Google if you don’t want to count the results individually. Simply enter your keyword (which can also be a phrase or a group of words) and your domain. When you click “Check ranking,” your ranking is returned to you in a matter of seconds.
Google’s success is thought to have stemmed from its desire and ability to provide higher-quality results for each user. Google returns simpler, more accurate results. Users will be satisfied if they like the search results they find based on their search queries. Customers who are pleased with a product or service are more likely to return.
These ranking systems are comprised of not one, but a number of algorithms. Search algorithms consider a variety of factors, including the words in your query, the relevance and usability of pages, the expertise of sources, and your location and settings, to provide you with the most useful information.