Darren over at ProBlogger has taken a look into the new Google patent to see what it is that Google really looks at. There is not enough time in my day to read through the patent myself, so I will gladly sum up some of what Darren has said and then point you over to his post for all the details.

1. “PageRank isn’t about the number of links, its about link growth.” Your popularity must grow - more people must link to you more often for your PageRank to grow.
2. “How often you update affects everything” Consistency seems key. Your rank will drop if you suddenly stop posting as often.
3. “How long you register your domain name for affects your rankings.” Good to know.
4. Cross-linking your sites is useless - Google knows its you from your registrar data.
5. Changing content is good - large content changes show you are keeping your site fresh

From Search-Science:
6. Search terms are important - what did people use to find you?
7. “history variable will include the number of times your documents appear in search results, and the number of times people choose to go there”
8. How long people stay on your site
9. Amount of comments
10. Whether you were added to bookmarks (hinted that Google looks at this via Google desktop search feature)
11. Keep all pages of your site fresh (perhaps this means posting to all your categories regularly)

Darren linked to a number of other sources, of which one is of personal interest to me (and likely others). This is the issue of the Google sandbox. There appears some validation within the patent that it may indeed exist. What is it? Well, it’s not a fun situation. Basically, Google will index your site, but then may put it in a “holding area,” so to speak. This is the Sandbox. Your PageRank will not climb while you are there, and therefore you will not really be found often on Google searches. It’s all very speculative as to whether or not it exists, and people are not completely sure how to get out of it. Currently, our other site, Blogaholics, is in the said sandbox.

Trust me, if I can figure out how to get out of the sandbox, I will most willingly share that information!