Google has updated its search ranking systems guide to clarify how page-level and site-wide signals influence search rankings.
The document now incorporates guidance from Google’s March core update blog post.
Key Changes
The updated guide states that Google focuses on individual page content for rankings, but overall site-wide signals also matter.
It clarifies that strong site-wide signals don’t guarantee high rankings for every page, and weak site-wide signals don’t ensure low rankings for all pages.
This is part of Google’s effort to be transparent about its ranking process.
Context From March Blog Post
This paragraph appears to be the new addition to Google’s guide to search Ranking Systems:
“Our ranking systems are designed to work on the page level, using a variety of signals and systems to understand how to rank individual pages. Site-wide signals and classifiers are also used and contribute to our understanding of pages. Having some good site-wide signals does not mean that all content from a site will always rank highly, just as having some poor site-wide signals does not mean all the content from a site will rank poorly.”
While it doesn’t use the exact wording, this text relates to the March blog post on site reputation abuse and ranking signals.
The March blog post contains a related but shorter Q&A section under “What ranking signals does a site have?”:
“Our core ranking systems are primarily designed to work on the page level, using a variety of signals and systems to understand how to rank individual pages. We do have some site-wide signals that are also considered.”
What Does This Mean?
For SEO professionals and website owners, this clarification reinforces the importance of maintaining both:
- High-quality individual page content
- Strong site-wide quality signals
This update doesn’t add new ranking factors. Instead, it improves the documentation of existing practices.
The changes align with Google’s recent efforts to combat spam and low-quality content, including new policies against expired domain abuse, scaled content abuse, and site reputation abuse.
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