Matt Cutts has regularly said there are 100 factors which influence the google serps. I was thinking if we could possibly try and come up with what we believe these 100 factors to be? Its a big ask but I am sure between us we can give it a go. I have started the first 10: 1. Title - keyword text 2. Description - text 3. Quality of sites linking back to your site 4. Age of domain 5. Distance between a trusted site and your site 6. How often you update your site 7. The text on your site 8. How old the links are that are pointing to your site 9. The consistency over time which sites link to yours 10. The anchor text on the incoming links 11. <h1> tag 12. bold , italic, underline 13. bounce rate 14. Image alt tags I will update this initial post as you guys suggest yours.
The popularity of the site. How long does the visitor remain on the site? Or does the visitor go back to google to look for another result?
There are 100-200 factors, Matt Cutts has hinted that it is just over 100. The thread title didn't really have the same effect with 'the just over' included. You are also wrong that there are hundreds (the way you worded it suggested I was way out) as if there are at least 300, 400, 500 factors. This is false Where are your sources to back up this statement? My sources: "Get other sites to "link" back to you. This is one of the most important of the 100 factors Google considers when ranking sites" - http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/080623-101341 "My advice is not to obsess about PageRank too much; it is one of more than 100 different factors in how we score documents." Matt Cutts http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/more-info-on-pagerank/
One of the easy ways would be to read tere patent. If they don't register how they work then anyone could steal there idea. http://www.seomoz.org/article/google-historical-data-patent