Trustrank

Seeing as there are a few posts here about PR I wanted to discuss what I think G will be doing instead.

Trustrank. Seeing as PR on my G toolbar is now greyed-out (and I think it will stay like that) what will the implications of Trustrank be?

Does anyone know?

Why don't you start it off and describe to us what you think Trustrank will be and how it will work?

TrustRank

http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/2004-17
http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/showDoc.Fulltext?lang=en&doc=2004-17&format=pdf&compression=&name=2004-17.pdf

Past blog coverage:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050425-131316
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050302-003107
http://www.seobook.com/archives/000661.shtml
http://google.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2005/05/25/trustrank-debunked/

Most of that refers to AdWords I believe.

Many are speculating that with the new update and this PR bar scare, TrustRank is being used in this new update. There is a supporters forum WMW thread where people are discussing it (if your a member, you can get access - so sorry if your not) http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum78/8774.htm

I'll research it more tomorrow and come back here to try to help, if I can.

RB... I knew you already know the answer.

This is not a quiz. ;)

Linking is what Tim Berners-Lee envisioned, so I link a lot.

Here has simple abstarct of Stanford article without technical terms

http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2005/04/29/future_pagerank_helps_reputation_and.htm

Whether or not PR is replaced by TR seems somewhat irrelevent to me. I don't know any good SEOs who pay much attention to the little green bar now. If it comes to represent a different meaning, I dubt there will be any reason to pay more attention. I have to believe that whatever (if anything) the little green bar will come to represent, Google has already integrated it into their search algos. So whatever they show us will have no new effect on the SERPs. So why should I care what they call it or what it represents.

While of course I don't *know* I can surely guess. I believe that a trust factor has been in place for some time now, probably since the March 04 update. I believe that the sandbox is in fact a trust factor of zero, or near zero, for new sites.

I would guess that as a new site is monitored over time, if it is SEOed within reason, if linking looks 'normal', and if it secures a few one way links from already trusted sites, it will probably be awarded a number higher than zero, but less than one. I think 'one' is probably the highest score, and represents a fully trusted site.

Taking this a step farther, I believe that every web page that is indexed already has a ranking score for specific keywords. For example, a site that sells flowers might have a score of 23,249 for the search term "roses", but a score of 11,417 for the term "baskets". (these numbers are for purpose of example only).

Let's say that a score of 23,249 would get this site the #1 spot for the term 'roses'. Now let's introduce 'trust'. Let's say that this site exhibited some behavior that was less than trustworthy, which caused its trust factor to fall from 1 to .85. We could then (in very simple terms) take the original 23,249 and multiply it by .85 for a new score of 19,762. This new lower score might represent the #9 spot for 'roses' and therefore our example site would fall from #1 to #9.

Essentially, I feel that the trust factor is designed to inhibit a site's position in SERPs until such time that site (or page) reaches full trustworthiness. I also think that while a 'non-trustworthy' behavior might take one site's trust factor from perhaps .7 down to .5, I think the same behavior is less of a penalty for a trusted site and might reduce a trusted site's trust factor of .95 to maybe .9 rather than .75. Basically, trusted sites are given the benefit of the doubt.

If this is true, we should all be questioning everything we do. That is, does this action make my site more trustworthy, or less so?

Hi Folks,

I am VERY sure, that we have seen parts of the Trustrank algorithm in the last update end of April.

However google has no reason to share the new ranking values with us, which is why they probably turned it off...

the strange appearance and crawling of 100k pages let me do some checks and assumptions on what weights more/less , but that's sure not the goal of google...

So i guess they simply got rid of it...

Anyway... what we need is a new common evaluation model, like a SEOrank or a BADrank for valuating sites fast and easy to compare (like the PR was) ... so basically a lot of numbers should go in...

like

Alexa,
Yahoo BL
Google BL
mSN BL

combined with those numbers for the top 10 backlinking sites per SE

- that means aprox. 40-50 queries in total per site...

has anyone built such a thing before or knows of a good and trusted toolkit to use/extend?

linkwth built such a thing, but you have to sign up there... I suggest something that you can use privately also

These are all interesting posts. Thanks to all. I dont' have much to add, except that this trust rank idea is finally what gives me incentive to get my sites listed in the yahoo directory.

I like the SEORank Calculator from Dan Wegner ((URL address blocked: See forum rules) ). It provides real-world feedback and not hidden secret formulas.

Another good one IMO is the Page Strength tool over at SEOmoz, factors in many different sources with lots of explanations about how each factor counts and is weighed. Good job SEOmoz

That tool doesn't necessarily work! I ran it for my main keyword and it shows my site in:
5th position in google- Actual position 2
Not in top 50 in ASK- Actual position 1

It gives me a trust rank of 37.5 for a site that is:
#1 and 2 in MSN
#2 in Y!
#2 in G
#1 in Ask

raz