Trust Rank & Hilltop From Google

PageRank is not the be all and end all of Google algorithims, Trust Rank and the Hilltop algorithim have been used by the search engine giant since 2005, both need to be concidered from a search engine optimization point of view.

Browse the Trust Rank white paper

In Summary, a page is recognized as a 'seed page', a page of high quality, by a human being, not a machine.  Pages that this seed page links to are also recognised as being of high quality and therefore benefit from a high Trust Rank.  The closer to the seed page another page is in the Internets linking structure, the more trust is passed on to that page and visa versa.  Once these seed pages have been identified, the easier it is to separate quality pages from spam pages

How Trust Rank works and the logic behind it:

Examples of seed pages:

Other interesting facts about Trust Rank:

• Pages that you link to are given weight.
• Authority sites that have been evaluated by human beings are given more linking power.

For a few years now, SEO professionals have been suggesting that the weight of links from low PageRank sites is diminishing month by month.  In order to succeed, we need to get links from seed pages and authority sites.  Think of the Internet as a huge social network, links are like relationships with people and just like relationships, the best links cannot be bought.

Trust Rank & search engine optimization:

Now that we know that we need links from seed pages, we need a way of finding these seed pages.  As you are browsing through possible pages and sites, ask your self the following questions:

• Is it an authorative site?
• Is it an editorial site?
• Does it have useful information?
• How old is the domain?

Once you have identified potential seed sites and or seed pages, invest time in getting a link from your identified sites and or pages.  There is little doubt that links from authority sites are worth gold and seed pages are at the heart of authority sites.

The Google Hilltop Algorithim:

Browse the Hilltop White Paper

Hilltop algorithim is another fix for PageRank.  Google realized that a high PR page could pass authority to a totally disrelated page through a link.  This meant that a site with lots of unrelated links would rank highly in the search engines.   Hilltop supposedly sorted this out and now a link to a toy shop site from a high PR page about gardening would count for very little.  Hilltop is similar to Trust Rank, but more automated, relying on 'expert documents' and links from them to other documents with the assumption that:

• If A links to B and B links to C, then A and C are related.

The Hilltop white paper also suggests that the Title tag and Header tags are very important, a fact that we see more and more, we believe that the  title tag is the most important of all the tags, browse our SEO ranking influences for more information.

Hilltop & search engine optimization:

The trick here is to spot and get links from these 'expert documents', aim for editorial links from authority websites, much as most SEO professionals have been advocating for some time.

Spotting authorative sites:

Look for a site in the SERPs (search engine results pages) that has a sitelink, these are links below the first search result, links to subsections of the site in question.  Links from these sites are worth gold.  Also look at the back link profile of the site you concider to be an authority site.  Use Yahoo Site Explorer to analyse these back links, you might find that the root hubs that link to your site are even more authorative.

Conclusion:

Trust Rank and Hilltop were introduced by Google to minimize the effects of overly aggressive search engine optimization techniques.  Prior to the introduction of these two algorithims, SEO professionals could dominate the search results of competitive terms by getting links from high PR sites.  With these algorithims in place we now need to focus on authority sites, not just PageRank.

 Your Google Trust Rank & Hilltop algorithim comments are welcome...