About "Link Reputation" - We Need Your Help Please Options

Without saying very much, we'd like to ask for your help in telling us whether or not the following statement is true or false?

Google does not place "link reputation" ( defined as the text used in a link ) as a ranking method.

If you mean that the words in a hyperlink won't help a page to rank highly for those words, then my vote is for FALSE.

Jill

Yes, Jill, that is EXACTLY what we mean!

Based upon everything I've seen and tested, the statement as phrased is false. Google do use the text within links to assist in ranking a page for terms within those links. An older article by Danny Sullivan is the first I remember to state this, when it was explaining how Google could actually include pages it had never crawled in its SERPs (which it can).

For what it's worth, I believe contextual links and anchors are lent credibility. I have no hard evidence since I've yet to see the results of personal experimentation and have not come across any before-and-after studies which prove one way or another. But simply thinking about it gives a gut feeling this is the right way to go. Given the proliferation of link farms, something must be built into the algos which distinguishes true outbounds - something requiring greater time and energy to generate relevant contextual refs - from irrelevant links.

It is certainly true that the text used in a link is important in Google's ranking algo, but I am uncertain what you mean by contextual links, Enigma ?

Are you saying that if I have a link to a college site on a page that has lots of other college-related info then the 'weight' given to that link is greater than if I have a link to a college site on a page full of stuff about widgets ?

If so, I believe you are wrong.

No, Mark, what I'm getting at is a link embedded in relevant copy. Like visit fred's weather site for European forecasts...

But I imagine that page contextual links hold some weight, albeit minimal.

Based on what I have seen, Google does use the text in a link when evaluating the relevance of a page for that keyword or words, and this seems to be getting a bit more prominence in their algo lately.
As you have phrased the question I would say that the statement (as phrased is false.

Bear in mind that the text in the link affects the page it points TO rather than the page the link is on. There are GOBS of articles out there, but here's the one I found first:

\"It's the way Google works and what makes Google [the] best search engine ever,\" Atomgas said. \"The difference between Google and other search engines is exactly this: Google makes the priority of the found results by the number and target of found links. If many people have links 'go to hell' pointing at Microsoft, Google will think that this is the best match to show to you, so the result[s] just show the mood of many Web site authors, not Google's opinion.\"

Full story:
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/printable/...d,105320,00.asp

At Google Type: < Google Microsoft "Go to Hell" >
There are lots of better articles than this one, but I didn't feel like sifting right now.

G.

Ah, OK, Enigma, then we are in agreement.

It's just that I've read many viewpoints on many sites claiming that the relevance of the rest of the text on a page that houses an inbound link is factored into Google's algo. IE: inbound links from sites that are on-topic or on 'theme' are given greater weight than inbound links from, say, general links pages.

I have plenty of evidence that says this is not true, but very little to support it.

Markymark, keep an eye on Topic Sensitive PageRank - a paper that is worthwhile reading for any SEO. Google have not started using this as a primary technique (yet) but you can be sure they are testing and tweaking for future referrence.

Funnily enough, Ammon, I've just been reading that paper.

The link is below for anyone else interested:

http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/cgi-bin/ma...document=2002/6

Topic Sensitive PageRank (which I'll refer to as TSPR from here on in) is an interesting idea, based upon some of the old ideas for personalisation. Technically it may one-day be possible to do these calculations based on a user-specified page, or even on whatever page you are visiting at the time, via the toolbar.

In the meantime, you can see the real effects of context sensitivity at Teoma, which uses the Hilltop Theory of link relevancy assessment. Here pages are weighted for how much PR they can give through links not just by popularity, but by popularity on other sites that also rank highly for the same terms.

It would be relatively simple for Google to use the hilltop theory too, and I think it could be in place within a month if they decided it would improve results. After all, PageRank already uses recursive calculations, and the Hilltop theory would simply involve a few more recursive steps.

Link Reputation

For months now this has been bothering me. ... (Ok, there's a lot of things bothering me, but let's focus on one for now)

How is link reputation different from anchor text?

I think it's S+Rs attempt to complicate things unnecessarily.

Well, link text is the same no matter what page it appears on, while link reputation is just as much about the connection between where the link appears and what it says ... think more about associations that include the link text, but would also include the topicality (relevance) of the page the text appeared on.

So, Ammon, the way I'm reading it, it would seem to imply that Google is considering other factors outside of the actual anchor text. For example, the words above, below and beside the actual anchor text? Or, the words in the page titles of the linking pages? Are we thinking "themes"?

I have never seen evidence of theming. I really doubt Google themes. Especially after seeing the Adsense ads. On one SEO, where an article on anchor text appeared, an example was given and the word "baseball" appeared once. Google showed baseball ads on that page! The page titles were SEO, the majority of the body copy was SEO. The links to other pages were SEO related. And Google showed baseball ads. I really don't think Google's theming is up to snuff. Just MHO, of course.

Is that the implication of the words "link reputation"? It is meant to allude to theming?

Only in the mildest sense, John.

Google has seemingly always looked at words close to the link as well as the link itself - they had to because of all of the "for keyword keyword, click here" type links around the web.

This creates a sort of theming [i]effect, and is a large part of the insistance of some SEOs that theming is a big part of Google.

Local Rank also has a theming effect, since it reranks the top results based on links from other (otherwise unrelated) pages within the same SERPs.

It has a theming effect, but is not really 'themes' in the sense most speak of themes. It is almost incidental theming, rather than deliberate.

Thanks for the explanation, Ammon.

Are you thinking that local ranking is working in the SERPs already?

I think Local Rank went into effect before the patent was actually granted. Grumpus suspected something like this had come into effect last Christmas, and when the patent came up, there was a sigh of "So that's what it was!"