Google has filed 3 new patents for its Google Notebook service which suggest plans to use Notebook listings as an additional factor in calculating Google's search engine rankings.

Bill Slawski reported on the new Google Notebook patents; highlighting the points in the 3rd patent (Presenting Search Result Information) that refer to potential ties between Google Notebook content and Google's ranking algorithm.

Back in May 2006, when I first blogged about the Google Notebook launch, I quietly wondered whether the search engine giant would use the service to help determine its rankings. Given its blend of bookmarking and online notation, its content is prime for adding a social element to the ranking algorithm.

Given the lack of buzz around Google Notebook since its launch, I presumed that Google was focusing on other social services to help improve the relevance of its search results. It appears that Google has other plans. Below are a couple of the excerpts from the patents:

Excerpt 1:

"Furthermore, the higher ranking can be based on an analysis of the contents of the web notebooks 118. For example, a web site matching a title, heading, user-annotation, metadata or clipped content from a web notebook 118 can receive a higher ranking than one that matched no web notebooks."

Excerpt 2:

"The web notebook-based ranker 404 uses the content of web notebooks to determine ranking. Web notebook content can include titles or headings in the web notebooks, snippets that have been clipped into the web notebooks, user-supplied annotations or user-supplied free-form text, metadata associated with web notebooks (e.g., metadata that identifies a corresponding search request, a time/date stamp, or other information related to a snippet, annotation, heading, title, etc.), and other information stored in the web notebooks."

From patent filing to execution can be a long time, but it's a take on the socialization of Google's search results that seems a logical fit. It'll be interesting to see how Google prevents the spamming and gaming of Google Notebook, that's inherent in similar social media services that impact SEO.

For more information on the patents and their ranking impact visit:

Bill Slawski's Post:



Might Google Notebooks Influence Web Rankings?

The Patents:

Web Notebook Tools

Managing and Accessing Data in Web Notebooks

Presenting Search Result Information

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