Assessing Your Page Relevance
Google assesses your page relevance with a simple formula: multiplying your IR score by PageRank value. Both factors are important to improving your website ranking in search results, but the first one is less known to public. While you can easily calculate your website PageRank by using a specific tool, it’s a lot more complicated than that with a Google IR score. However, the parameter is mentioned in Google patents a few times, which makes it possible to have a general understanding of its nature and develop tips on how to use it to your advantage.
What Is Google IR Score
IR score, or Information Retrieval score, is a metric used by Google in ranking websites. Basically, it is a numerical value of the keyword relevance to your website regarding the phrase placement on the page. “The IR score for a blog/blog post may be determined based on a matching of the search terms of a search query to an index created based on the hybrid documents.”
According to the Google patents, IR score is used for evaluating site quality signals, ranking website materials and considering user feedback.
The search engine calculates two types of IR score:
- Scores of clicked results
- Scores of all results shown before click
In addition to that, Google also saves the information on the behavioral data of users to improve the relevance of search results and provide the information that has been previously considered appropriate by other users.
Why You Should Work on Your IR Score
Taking into consideration that IR score has been mentioned in Google patents multiple times, it is possible to conclude that this criterion is crucial to determining your website ranking, although there is no indication of it as a compulsory factor. Google doesn’t give the full explanation of how the IR score is calculated. However, there are still some hints as to the search term occurrence on the page and its proximity within the text.
What Google IR Score Depends On
Basically, this parameter depends on both content of your page and the number of its anchor links. According to the information presented in patents, the IR score is determined by the following factors:
- Whether keywords are placed within the main content and/or first few paragraphs
- The font size and color
- Placement of keywords in the page title and headlines from one to six
- Whether anchors include keywords
In addition to these criteria, Google also might check your website structure and user profile terms which are used to improve the search results. Once these terms are identified on your page, they will increase your website ranking for a particular user. For this very reason, it is recommended to add subject-specific terminology to the content. The most efficient way is to add them to the page title, URL-address or to the first paragraphs.
How You Can Improve Your Website IR Score
To avoid spamming and other undesirable consequences, Google doesn’t disclose how exactly the IR score is calculated. However, it is possible to get a general understanding of do’s and don’ts in building your website content.
- As users rarely move on to the second page of a website, try to place all the relevant information on your first page.
- Include keywords in the beginning of your text. They should be mentioned the first couple of paragraphs on the first page, as well as included into the page title and headings one through six.
- Remember to place keywords close to one another, as it will also influence the page ranking.
- Try to optimize the font size and color as well as it background color.
- Use keywords in the anchor list of your page.
Promoting Your Website With Google IR
Assessing page quality is crucial to providing users with the most relevant results, and Google, as well as other search engines, use specific algorithms to do it to the best extent. One example is Google IR: the Information Retrieval score. You can improve your page ranking by increasing its IR score. To do so, provide the correct placement of keywords in the content and anchor list, as well as optimize the font.
