Brotli - the new compression algorithm from Google

Google is introducing a new compression algorithm named Brotli, which it says can reduce file sizes up to 26 percent over existing solutions.

The increased density is achieved by “a 2nd order context modeling, re-use of entropy codes, larger memory window of past data and joint distribution codes.”

Its current compression algorithm, Zopfli, isn’t being buried (yet, at least). Google notes Zopfli is already in use across various compression solutions, so shuttering it won’t happen straight away.

Brotli — Swiss-German for ‘small bread’ — is a big deal. It’s not an iterative deflate-compatible engine, but a whole new data format.

In a study, Google measured the compression speed and ratio of Brotli against current standards like Zopfli, LZMA and LZHAM. It found the new format used less CPU than existing remedies across all decompression corpora.

While it’s very early, Brotli is faster and more powerful in testing, meaning faster page loads and data transfer. It also uses less CPU and battery, and is open source just like its predecessor.

http://google-opensource.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/introducing-brotli-new-compression.html

Source: TNW News

Google PageRank formula

What is all this fuss about PageRank?

Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page created their search engine algorithm that shifted the ranking weight to off-page factors. The formula called PageRank (named after its founder Larry Page) evolved where the algorithm would score out of ten the "value" of each website in comparison to other websites on the Internet. It is based on two key factors; the number of links you have pointing to your website and the value of the links pointing to your website. The value is calculated based on the PageRank of the page linking to your website and the relevancy of the page linking to your site.

In order to do this, you should begin by understanding Google’s PageRank. Although Google PageRank is the heart of the Google algorithm, it is not the absolute consideration in determining the most relevant website and hence the highest listing in the search engine results pages. A definition of PageRank as provided by Google is included below:

Defining Google PageRank

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyses the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Importantly, high quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query.

So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text matching algorithms to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.

PageRank of the Linking Page

Firstly, PageRank of the linking page is one of the most important factors as it determines how much value of importance is passed on to your web page. The higher the PageRank of the linking page, the higher the value your website will receive.

What can Google actually index?

Google can index most types of pages and files. The most common file types include:

Adobe Portable Document Format (.pdf)
Adobe PostScript (.ps)
Atom and RSS feeds (.atom, .rss)
Autodesk Design Web Format (.dwf)
Google Earth (.kml, .kmz)
Lotus 1-2-3 (.wk1, .wk2, .wk3, .wk4, .wk5, .wki, .wks, .wku)
Lotus WordPro (.lwp)
MacWrite (.mw)
Microsoft Excel (.xls)
Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt)
Microsoft Word (.doc)
Microsoft Works (.wks, .wps, .wdb)
Microsoft Write (.wri)
Open Document Format (.odt)
Rich Text Format (.rtf)
Shockwave Flash (.swf)
Text (.ans, .txt)
Wireless Markup Language (.wml, .wap)

Using Google Advanced Search to diagnose your website

Using Google itself, with knowledge of some of the advanced search features, will enable you to achieve an insight into your own site in regards to SEO.

Firstly, check to ensure that your site is free from any filtering issues by using: search [yourdomain.com] in Google; if your sites comes up #1 for this query, you are doing alright. If you see other sites mentioning your domain ranked first, that could be a bad sign.

Next, check for duplicate content problems. Search for a pretty long extract of text from your site (exact match, i.e. in quotes). Blogs, for example, have a good chance of seeing the category page (summarising the post) instead of the corresponding post page.

Determine how many links or URLs from your site have actually been indexed by Google by using: search [site:yourdomain.com] and then “dig deeper” into the search results by searching [site:yourdomain.com/subdirectory1] and then, [site:yourdomain.com/subdirectory2] and so on, as the “deeper” you dig, the accuracy increases.

It is worthwhile checking to see if your site has canonical problems where a non-www. url reference may be listed, if you had determined to focus on www. displaying primarily. Do this by searching [site:yourdomain.com -inurl:www] and see if any non-www URLs are picked up.

The following are search queries to use in identifying the more powerful pages of your site:
[www site:yourdomain.com]
[tld site:yourdomain.tld]
[inurl:domain site:yourdomain.com]
[domain site:yourdomain.com]

Leading on from this, you can then identify the most powerful pages of your website (keyword-dependent) by using the search query: [site:yourdomain.com inanchor:keyword]

To then determine sites with the most potential for promotional opportunity use:
[site:yourdomain.com inanchor:”key * word”]
[site:yourdomain.com intitle:”key * phrase”]

To assist you to find the most relevant pages of your site, lending them to additional promotion for a specified term use the search query [site:yourdomain.com keyword] or [site:yourdomain.com key * phrase].

Crawl and index frequency by Google can be determined using the search query [site:yourdomain.com] then play around with “date range” advanced search option.

Check who, and also what, your site is associated with in the SERPs by using the search query [related:yourdomain.com]. This will help to identify your site co-citation, or who your promoters also link to as well.

Review your competition's backlinks by using the link domain command. [linkdomain:competitor.com -site:competitor.com]

To narrow this down further and to see who links to all of the competitors you're targeting, you can use a search query such as: [linkdomain:competitor1.com linkdomain:competitor2.com linkdomain:competitor3.com].

Probably worth refining this query to exclude your own site to something like: [linkdomain:competitor1.com linkdomain:competitor2.com linkdomain:competitor3.com -linkdomain:yoursite.com].