Google Weighs Authority Signals More Heavily During Significant Events

During a significant event, such as an emergency, Google is often the go-to search engine for up-to-the-minute news. Marketers can learn from this.

In a video on it’s main YouTube Channel, Google stated that, during a significant event (for example, a fire), it uses authoritative signals to determine the best sources of the most reliable situation.

This is just one of the ways the search engine tries to provide searchers with the best results during a live event.

But, how does the search engine determine that something is a significant event?

Well, Google’s systems are designed to recognize if a certain search query is trending. (So, supposing that there were a fire in BC, Canada, then presumably, the search query, BC fire would be trending, particularly in that geographic location).

Once Google’s systems discover that that query (and likely iterations) is trending, it starts getting to work. It tries to find the freshest content related to the trending query.

For digital marketers and Web-based businesses, there are some good learning points:

1. Site authoritativeness is an important metric. The high the authority of your site, the more that what your site says matters.
2. For businesses that are in trending markets, having up-to-the-minute, fresh content that matches trending queries can be a key to search engine traffic and exposure.
3. You can use Google Trends to discover trending search queries. Twitter can also be a great resource for discovering fresh topics within your niche.

It’s very simple to use Google Trends and Twitter. Just go to either of those sites, enter a search query you’re interested in, and see the latest results.