Sgt_Kickaxe - 6:20 pm on Oct 28, 2010 (gmt 0)

I've been feeling the same for some time Tedster and in my post above I hesitated speaking my mind, I do that a lot unfortunately.

Anyway, profiling seems to be a fact of life for sites and their owners because everything is reduced to data and that data is classified and stored and rated in countless ways.

It's not a complete mystery however. In fact Google is telling us all about what it considers quality factors. On a per factor basis, both good and bad, it's up to us to figure out how we measure up against the collective. Since we can't really know what the collective data is beyond an educated guess the best gameplan is to raise as many of our own quality factors as possible and avoid practices that may damage our own ratings.

Figuring out which darned factor outweighs another however, no two sites seem the same!

Some factors lay outside the box no doubt, perhaps such as "JohnDoe12345's sites send 99% of their traffic to eBay, reduce converting traffic accordingly to bring JohnDoe12345 back in line with similar sites, label JohnDoe12345 an affiliate and assign that label (with all it's glorious effects) to all of his sites until this metric improves". Who knows.

Did this post just end up being added to the collective profiling of me as a webmaster? Perhaps, while I won't put on a tinfoil hat it's technically possible now. Just being aware it's possible means I need to account for it in some way, enter the "gut feeling".

I'm more interested in knowing what you guys think would be "outside the box quality factors" than speculating on if they exist.