What Does Google RankBrain Do?

Posted by LauraDerb on January 14th, 2021

Google recently confirmed that RankBrain really existed, but as many of us know it is anybody s guess just how long it has been around and still being in use. So, to sum it up in as little time as possible Google RankBrain was one of three major ranking factors that took into consideration visitor experience, click-through rate, and dwell time. They stated that they used a combination of factors to give the Google Search engine an indication of user intent. Below I will highlight what Google has stated regarding how does Google RankBrain work.

How does Google RankBrain work? Google has been quite open about how does Google RankBrain work, they state on their Google RankBrain home page "RankBrain is an artificial intelligence system which use information from natural search results, user profiles and synonym and inverse search terms to provide more relevant search results for a domain authority." This seems fairly clear cut. It is an artificial intelligence system and Google have described how it works on several occasions. The way that RankBrain works is quite complex though, and I will now outline how Google rank brain works.

When we look at how does Google RankBrain work we see that it uses synonyms and some odd keywords that are commonly searched. synonyms are those words that can be used to replace a word that is not commonly used. For instance if we were searching for "How does Google rank brain functions". We could type in the search query as "How does Google rank brain functions". If we were looking for a synonym we could do the same thing. So we would type in the word "how does Google rank brain functions" and the website "RankBrain" would appear in the search results.

Once the RankBrain has found some synonyms and searched for enough of them Google will analyze the synonyms and choose the one that is most relevant. Then it will apply this synonym into the query. Now this is the interesting part. Once the website has been selected Google will then do a search on that selected website using all the keywords that are associated with that website. So now we have Google selecting keywords that are relevant to the query. It then applies those keywords to the queries in order to find the most relevant matches.

In order to make Google RankBrain work properly you need to have a good number of synonyms for your selected keywords. This will improve your rankings since the synonyms will act as the anchor text for the keywords. Hence it will improve the chances of your site being selected by Google when someone searches for those particular keywords. And of course, having relevant synonyms also improves the chances of your website appearing on the first page of Google when someone searches for the searched terms. Having lower-quality synonyms will only harm your ranking ambitions since Google will never accept a site that has poor quality synonyms.

To sum up, this is how Google RankBrain works. It works by having Google analyze the intent of the searcher, then after receiving this intent it will assign the keywords based on the searcher's intention. When the searcher leaves the query page, the keywords that were used on the first page of Google are selected and the sites which were ranked according to these keywords are given a better chance of being included on the first page.

Of course the goal of this is to optimize your site by finding synonyms for your selected keywords. So the bottom line is that Google RankBrain works by analyzing the intent of the user. The best way to optimize your site is to first have a high rank on Google so that Google will find you easily whenever somebody performs a search. The second goal is to use the same keywords over again to rank higher. This is because if your site ranks for a keyword repeatedly you will receive an automatic influx of traffic. This will ensure that each keyword has been effectively promoted hence achieving a higher ranking.

As Google ranks a website according to the keywords that have been used over again, it means that your site will rank higher in the more times your keyword has been used. Hence with a lower-quality keyword, Google will not consider your site in its results hence giving you a lower rank. In order to maintain a high rank, you have to focus on a long tail keyword since these keywords do not require you to invest a lot in capital thus giving you a good return on investment. There are some tools which will show you the frequency of your keyword being used hence giving you an idea of how well you're optimizing. These tools will also help you know the average number of searches per month and hence how to improve your site for better rankings.