Google patent inventor
Paul Haahr is a Google ranking engineer who joined the company in 2002. He has been described as part of the senior leadership of Google's search ranking team. In 2016 he presented "How Google Works: A Google Ranking Engineer's Story" at the SMX West conference.
All their Google patents on Google PatentsPatent US 8,577,893, signed by Anna Patterson and Paul Haahr, fingerprints the rare words around every link pointing to a page, then ranks the page by the number and distribution of those contexts. The full mechanism and what it means for link building.
Patent US 8,407,231 scores a page by how its links appear and disappear over time: a falling rate of new links marks it as stale, while sudden spikes can signal bought links. The full mechanism and what it means for link building.
“Older domains rank better” is one of SEO's most repeated myths. We trace it back to a misread patent and show what Google has actually said.