I mean, most of the times they become popular in the first place because they show first on Google… no?
In: Technology
Sort of.
Keep in mind Google’s not just scanning that site. It’s scanning millions of other sites. As part of scanning sites, it looks at which sites link to other sites. It assumes if lots of sites are linking to another site, that site is “popular” because people are talking about it.
Google also pays attention to the words used when linking. If I link [click here](http://example.com) I’m not really boosting the popularity of a site. But if I link [cool article about pizza](http://example.com), and Google’s already decided that site is an article about pizza, it decides even more strongly that the article is a good match for “pizza”.
This happens continuously, and new pages getting more new links for keywords are considered “more popular” than older pages not getting as much “buzz”.
(All of this is oversimplified, the Google algorithm is very complex!)
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