7 replies to this topic

[bobmutch]

ILQ (Inbound Link Quality) Tools

Well its been a lot of hard work but v1.0 of my web based ILQ Rating Tool, ILQ Directory Search Tool, and my Firefox ILQ Rating Extension are finished.

You can find these tools at www.seocompay.ca in the first starter block.

Web Based Tools

ILQ Rating Tool: This is a JavaScript tool that shows the number of dir.yahoo, dmoz.org, .edu and .gov inbound links a web site has and the ILQ value. The information that this tool provides is acquired from Yahoo via their API.
www.seocompany.ca/directory/ilqtool.html

ILQ Directory Search Tool: This tool is a form tool that shows which directories the entered site are in. This tools is in Beta but I have released it any way. This tools is being converted to JavaScript and will have a better look when finished. It also accesses link information from Yahoo via their API.
www.seocompany.ca/dirtool/

ILQ Directory Search & Buy Tool This tool is a JavaScript tool that shows which directories the entered site are in. What is different with this tool is that it is integrated into my Top 40 ILQ Directories purchase form. That means you can go to the purchase page and enter in a domain and it will check the purchase check boxes of the directories the domain is not in and give you a price of what it would cost.
www.seocompany.ca/directory/top-web-directories.html#ilqdir

FireFox Extension

FireFox ILQ Rating Extension This extension shows the number of dir.yahoo, dmoz.org, .edu, and .gov inbound links a web site has. It also shows the sites age, the daily Alexa (this will be changed to 3 month average), and will show the PR in the next version. You can turn any or all of the values off.

Here is what the FF extension looks like:


Here is the extension options:



You can download the extension here:
www.seocompany.ca/downloads/statusextensionilq.xpi

Short primer on ILQ.

What is ILQ?
ILQ stands for Inbound Link Quality. It is a measurement based on points given for each dir.yahoo, dmoz.org, .edu, and .gov link. ILQ gives you an indication of the quality of inbound links a web site has.

How does the point system work?
dir.yahoo links get 1 point, dmor.org links get 30 points, .edu links get 45 points, and .gov links get 67 points.

What was your reasoning behind the points values?
A submission to dir.yahoo gets you on the average 15 links. As a dir.yahoo link has the lowest Trustrank weight of the four types of links the ILQ tools messures I gave each dir.yahoo link one point. Next on the list for Trustrank is dmoz.org links.

While getting a link from DMOZ to your own site gives you good ranking juice its not quite the same when you look at getting links from sites that have one or more DMOZ inbound links. I valued the Trustrank transfered from a site that has one dmoz link as twice the value of the Trustrank transfers from a site that has 15 dir.yahoo links or what I would consider the average dir.yahoo submission so each DMOZ link is given 30 points.

I calculated that a .edu link transfers 1.5 times the Trustrank a DMOZ link does when you are getting a link from a site that has .edu and DMOZ links so I gave each .edu link 45 points. Last I calculated that a .gov link transfers 1.5 times the Trustrank a .edu link does so a .gov link was given the value of 67.

Are you suggesting that ILQ is a better measurement than Pagerank (PR) is for a value of a link?
Yes I am! Pagerank is broken and doesn't look like it can be fixed. High PR can be bought where ILQ for the most part has to be earned. While you can buy 15 ILQ points by purchasing a dir.yahoo submission, addition links from dir.yahoo have to be won based on quality not on the amount of money you have.

The same with DMOZ links. While there may be a few corrupt DMOZ editors that will add your site to DMOZ for a favor, most people that try to go this route get there sites blacklisted from offering a bribe to the wrong person. While there are some lower quality sites in DMOZ when a site gets numerous links from DMOZ this almost always indicates the site is a high quality site.

With .edu links there are a few ways to “buy” .edu links (like helping out a student with there education costs in exchange for them reviewing your site on there home page) but for the most part .edu links are given based on the quality of the site.

When it comes to .gov links there is almost no way to “buy” one hence these links have highest Trustrank.

How can high Pagerank be bought?
People go out and buy high PR links and point them at a site and artificially boast the Pagerank of their site. They can produce a PR5 or PR6 site very easy with bought links and then sell the links on that site for $20 to $50 a month. The ranking weight that a site like this passes could be little or none. It is not always easy to tell if a site has gotten there PR naturally or with money. This is one of the main problems with using Pagerank as a guide for the value of having a link from a site.

Edited by bobmutch, 26 May 2006 - 02:59 PM.

[phaithful]

Sweet tool!.... I like the FireFox extension. I'm going to play around with it a big more.

[cre8pc]

Thanks Bob!

See more of Bob's work in SEO Tools

[yannis]

Thanks Bob this is a great tool.

I have cheked one of my sites that is DMOZ listed, and although is shown on most of the DMOZ mirrors on your list it is not shown as listed in DMOZ you may want to check this while polishing your script.

I must say though I am very impressed with this tool.

Edited by send2paul, 26 May 2006 - 03:54 PM.

[Jean_Manco]

This is an interesting tool. Your reasoning makes a lot of sense to me.

But I'm not convinced that Dmoz is actually included among the seed sites used in TrustRank. The paper on TrustRank says that they were extremely selective in the choice of seed sites, and the final bunch had a clearly identifiable authority (such as a government or educational institution or company) that controlled the contents of the site. That wouldn't apply to Dmoz. As you know, it is owned by AOL, but mainly run by a bunch of volunteers.

By the way - not all universities have .edu domains. Those in the UK and one or two other English-speaking countries use .ac.* (e.g. for the uk it is .ac.uk.) Those in Canada don't seem to use either .edu or .ac.

Your tool showed my site with 17 edu links and 0 gov links. Actual IBL from universities about 50 I think (quite a lot of them ac.uk), and 11 from gov.uk.

Edited by Jean_Manco, 26 May 2006 - 03:09 PM.

[bobmutch]

Jean_Manco:

>>>But I'm not convinced that Dmoz is actually included among the seed sites used in TrustRank.

I'm not either and Matt is not telling.

>>>The paper on TrustRank says that they were extremely selective in the choice of seed sites, and the final bunch had a clearly identifiable authority (such as a government or educational institution or company) that controlled the contents of the site.

Well I have read those papers to and I was surprised that there was such a small seed group. I am not sure that was the way it was done. Besides that as you know there are 100 to 200 different factors that Google takes into consideration. When I think of Trustrank I am not thinking just a set of seeded sites.

I hold that there is more than one way for Google to assign trust to a site. I also hold that dir.yahoo and dmoz have trust and that that trust is passes from sites that have dir.yaho and dmoz inbounds to other sites. While I might not beat the drums as hard as Mike Valentine his Dynamite articles is interesting.
http://web.olm1.com/..._tips/56173.php

My personal opinion is that Trustrank is getting a larger share of the ranking weight pie and have links from sites that have lots of dir.yahoo and dmoz.org inbounds is getting more and more important.

>>>By the way - not all universities have .edu domains. Those in the uk and one or two other countries use .ac.* (e.g. for the uk it is .ac.uk.) Those in Canada and Germany don't seem to use either .edu or .ac.

Yes - same thing with government sites. We use .gc.ca for federal and gov.xx.ca for provincial in Canada.

I wanted to keep the tool rating system simple and not to add to many variables. The more variables the more room for disagreement. I was looking for some thing that would take off and get penetration in the SEO community.

The SEO community pretty much as a whole holds that dir.yahoo, dmoz.org, .edu and .gov inbounds transfer huge trust. Getting a consensus in the SEO community and then promoting that view among webmasters will help to cut down on the Pagerank dealers and cut down on the number of people that think Pagerank still counts for ranking weight.

[bobmutch]

yannis:

>>>I have checked one of my sites that is DMOZ listed Cape and although is shown on most of the DMOZ mirrors on your list it is not shown as listed in DMOZ you may want to check this while polishing your script.

The web based tools are using Yahoo's API. The FF extension is scraping the results. I will probably change the DMOZ check on the ILQ directory tool to search though dmoz. With the ILQ rating the backlinks is the best place to get the number of DMOZ inbounds a site has.
Some times the DMOZ inbounds don't show in the Yahoo backlinks.

The DMOZ search just shows total entries not total links.

Yahoo backlinks shows 2 links:
http://search.yahoo.... site:dmoz.org

DMOZ shows 1 link:
http://search.dmoz.o...ch=sagerock.com

[bobmutch]

cre8pc:

>>>Thanks Bob!

Hey did you see the new column in my ILQ Top Web Directories, PRW.

Passing Ranking Weight.

This column shows which directories pass ranking weight and which ones don't.

Here is an example for cannylink.com:
http://www.google.co...es 050420061753