How Google May ‘Understand’ Unique Content

Thanks to Rand’s excellent research and Barry’s expletive-laden ranting, we know that Google processes over 5 trillion searches each year. Trillion. Per day, that’s 13.7 billion. Per second, 158,000.

There are some sizeable and growing caveats here:

That still means Google processes 2.92 billion clicks to the open web every day. It’s still a figure worth fighting for – particularly for publishers whose business models heavily rely on a click.

So let’s not totally lose sight of what matters in the here and now. And unique content certainly fits that mould.

I have reviewed a few previous patents (Google’s in-depth article patent explained and how Google ranks news sites), and it is not a thoroughly enjoyable experience. A granted patent protects an idea; it doesn’t prove deployment or real-world use cases – and it’s certainly not unlike big tech to claim ownership of something just so it can’t be used elsewhere.

Generally, if:

1. The patent is cited regularly and recently? This patent (Contextual estimation of link information gain) has been cited 24 times and as recently as last year.
2. Whether it has international filings? Yes, but with some caveats. US, China, ceased in Europe and worldwide, but extended in the US to 2039 very recently.
3. Whether Google has protected the ranking technology around the world? Yes, again with some caveats.
4. Does it broadly align with your understanding of the concept (in this case non-commodity content)? Very much so. As the rasping breaths of SEO-first, commodity content make even iron lungs work hard, it would be inconceivable for Google to not measure or evaluate uniqueness in some manner.

It is more likely to be used in some capacity.

TL;DR

1. Google has multiple public and leaked systems that appear to evaluate originality, effort, and unique contribution – see OriginalContentScore and ContentEffort.
2. The patent describes an information gain score (potentially in a 0 – 1 framing) that is assigned to a document based on how much new information it adds beyond documents a user has already seen on the same topic.
3. In my – and many others’ – opinion, Google’s systems reward originality in some way. Whether that’s directly through an information gain score and re-ranking system, a Bayesian predictive score, or indirectly through positive engagement signals, I couldn’t tell you.
4. Originality doesn’t mean an entirely different document. As little as a 10% difference could be the delineator between marketing success or failure.

How Does It Work In Practice?

This patent is not about the information gain applied to the current set of search results. It’s about the subsequent set of results – ranking the next set of search results based on wider user search behavior, personalization, and added document value.

It highlights that documents:

• May be reranked.
• May be excluded.
• May be significantly demoted.
• May no longer appear in results.

Based on the amount of novel, relevant…