How Google Works

1. How Google sees a page

2. Where Google focuses

3. Including dates on web pages

4. Anatomy of a Google search result

5. What cannot be crawled by Google

6. Breaking news story cycle

1. How Google sees a page

2. Where Google focuses

Google focuses on:

Headline | Content intro | Body | Image Alt Text

• Google crawls a site from top to bottom and places priority on above-the-fold unique content

• Internally linking and optimising titles and content intro is key

3. Including dates on web pages

Google determines a date using a variety of factors, including but not limited to: any prominent date listed on the page itself or dates provided by the publisher through structured markup.

To help Google to pick the right date, site owners and publishers should:

• Show a visible date prominently on the page.

• Position date and time between the headline and the article text

• If you update a page significantly, also update the visible date

• If specifying a time, make sure to provide the correct timezone, taking into account daylight saving time

• Don’t use future dates or dates related to what a page is about: Always use a date for when a page itself was published or updated

• Troubleshoot by minimizing other dates on the page

Source: Official Google Webmaster Blog

4. Anatomy of a Google search result

5. What cannot be crawled by Google

6. Breaking news story cycle

• In order to rank well in search, it is important to publish a breaking story quickly

• Make sure the original publish date for a story remains unchanged even if the article is updated

• A good practice is to publish the initial story as quickly as possible to build momentum, and then publish updates to the story