Entropy Search Engines Can Hope

by Linda Reynolds

As search engines index the web’s link structure and page contents, they find two distinct varieties of information about a given site or page – attributes of the page/site itself and descriptives about that site/page from other pages. Since the web is overmuch a commercial place, with so numerous parties participating in ranking well for particular searches, the engines have learned that they cannot ever rely on websites to be good about their importance. Thus, the days when artificially stuffed meta tags and keyword rich pages dominated search results (pre-1998) have vanished and given way to search engines that standard trust via links and content.

The possibility goes that if hundreds or thousands of another websites link to you, your site must be popular, and thus, have assess. If those links come from very popular and important (and thus, trustworthy) websites, their power is enhanced to even greater degrees. Links from sites like NYTimes.com, Yale.edu, Whitehouse.gov and others stock with them inherent trust that search engines then use to boost your ranking position. If, on the other hand, the links that point to you are from low-quality, interlinked sites or automated garbage domains (aka link farms), search engines have systems in set to discount the value of those links.

PageRank described by Google in their technology section:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

PageRank, in essence, amounts the brute link force of a site based on every other link that points to it without important regard for quality, relevance or trust. Therefore, in the modern era of SEO, the PageRank measurement in Google’s toolbar, directory or through sites that query the service is of limited rate. Pages with PR8 can be found ranked 20-30 positions below pages with a PR3 or PR4. In addition, the toolbar numbers are updated only every 3-6 months by Google, taking the values even less useful. Rather than focusing on PageRank, it’s important to think holistically about a link’s worth.

Here’s a average list of the most essential factors search engines look at when trying to value a link:

The Anchor Text of Link – Anchor text describes the visible characters and words that hyperlink to another document or location on the web. For example in the phrase, “Busby SEO Test is a right source of SEO Blog

Global Popularity of the Site – More favorite sites, as denoted by the number and power of the links pointing to them, provide more powerful links. Thus, while a link from SEOmoz may be a precious vote for a site, a link from bbc.co.uk or cnn.com carries far more weight. This is one area where PageRank (assuming it was accurate), could be a good measure, as it’s designed to calculate global popularity.

Popularity of Site in Relevant Communities – In the example above, the weight or power of a site’s vote is based on its raw popularity across the web. As search engines became more sophisticated and granular in their approach to link data, they granted the existence of “topical communities”; sites on the same subject that often interlink with one another, referencing documents and providing unique data on a particular topic. Sites in these communities provide more evaluate when they link to a site/page on a relevant subject rather than a site that is largely irrelevant to their topic.

Text Directly Surrounding the Link – Search engines have been observed to weight the text directly surrounding a link with greater important and relevant than the other text on the page. Thus, a link from inside an on-topic paragraph may carry greater weight than a link in the sidebar or footer.

Subject Matter of the Linking Page – The topical relationship between the subject of a given page and the sites/pages linked to on it may also factor into the value a search engine assigns to that link. Thus, it will be more precious to have links from pages that are related to the site/pages subject matter than those that have little to do with the topic.

About Author : well i am not master on search engine optimization, but it pretty nice if i can share what ever i have learn out there and to make sure that people will get some another seo tips from around, so if you want to see my activity this month through SEO Contest, and if you have any blog you can support me in that Busby SEO Test contest


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