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PageRank, TrustRank and your web site
Yahoo has filed a new patent with the name "Link
based spam detection". It's another attempt from Yahoo
to improve the relevancy of their search results by detecting
links from link farms and other shady link sources.
Yahoo uses PageRank and TrustRank to rank your web
site
Yahoo mentions both PageRank and TrustRank in the patent
application. That's interesting because both terms are trademarks
of Google:
"PageRank is a family of well known algorithms for
assigning numerical weights to hyperlinked documents
(or web pages or web sites) indexed by a search engine.
PageRank uses link information to assign global importance
scores to documents on the web.[...]. The PageRank of
a document is a measure of the link-based popularity
of a document on the Web.
TrustRank is a link analysis technique related to
PageRank. TrustRank is a method for separating reputable,
good pages on the Web from web spam. TrustRank is based
on the presumption that good documents on the Web seldom
link to spam. TrustRank involves two steps, one of seed
selection and another of score propagation. The TrustRank
of a document is a measure of the likelihood that the
document is a reputable (i.e., a nonspam) document."
Although Yahoo uses the terms PageRank and TrustRank in
the patent application, it's likely that the algorithms are
not identical to the algorithms that are used by Google.
How Yahoo tries to identify spam sites by using
PageRank and TrustRank
In the patent application, Yahoo explains how they want
to find spam farms with the help of PageRank and TrustRank:
"A spam farm is an artificially created set of pages
that point to a spam target page to boost its significance.
Trust-ranking ("TrustRank") is a form of PageRank with
a special teleportation (i.e., jumps) to a subset of
high-quality pages.
Using techniques described herein, a search engine
can automatically find bad pages (web spam pages) and
more specifically, find those web spam pages created
to boost their significance through the creation of artificial
spam farms (collections of referencing pages).
In specific embodiments, a PageRank process with uniform
teleportation and a trust-ranking process are carried
out and their results are compared as part of a test
of the "spam-ness" of a page or a collection of pages."
What does this mean to your web site?
Search engine engineers are not stupid. The search engine
algorithms are evolving faster than ever. For that reason,
it is important that you don't use "quick fix" solutions
to get links to your web site.
If a service promises hundreds of links to your web site
with no work or efforts on your part, then chances are that
these links are from a link farm. Search engines don't like
link farms and some web sites even get penalized by participating
in a link farm system.
Focus on organic link building and get
high quality links that are beneficial to you and your
web site visitors. If you use that kind of links then
you don't have to be afraid of spam filters. With these
links, search engines will see your web site as a useful
resource and they will give your site high rankings.
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