bose - 1:44 pm on Jun 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

msndude opined:

One might then think of authority as being earned by being quality over a period of time.

In so far as "evergreen" subject matters go. For current/recent events related searches, over reliance on age/time related signals of quality would make those SERPs only good for trip back to the memory lane.

For example, show the authority for "hypersonic widgits" even though the query was for "hypersonic widgit cleaners."

That would be a cop-out, dude! :) If one were to let this zooming-out-of-focus go on up a few more notches, it could leave you with mostly vague/useless results.

For example, if the query was "hard hitting soft ball players," diluting the focus could possibly return listings for "hard balls," "soft balls," "hitting balls", "hitting players," "soft players," or just "balls." If a searcher provides you with a focused query, why not use it? Zooming out of it would leave you with having to discern user-intent -once again- using (less-than-perfect) Algo that would never be as precise in determining user-intent as that user could be.

I can imagine returning results that are more or less in the (general) vicinity of what a searcher may be looking for may be easier than returning results that are right on the money; but then it would be like a doctor telling a patient: Sir, you have a cancerous tumor somewhere in your upper body, so we are going to radiate all of your upperbody. I would say: Run, Forrest, Run!

You'll win this race by providing results that are right on the money, not a list of documents that are more or less in the "ball" park -or should we say "balls" park? ;) sorry, couldn't resist.

Marcia opined:

With an authority site being one that's linked to from many quality hubs (the classic definition), that doesn't necessarily mean that the page returned is authoritative for the user.

You're right on the money, Marcia. Link popularity centric authority/quality awards are sooooo last century. I am sure there are countless highly knowledgeable (real) experts out there who could not be bothered to go around begging for links. One would think their pages would gain IBLs over time, but they don't. With all that PR (page rank) hoarding paranoia out there, people just do not link out as routinely/easily or naturally as they used to pre-Google-Toolbar-PR era. Citation based accreditation used to make sense a few years ago, not anymore.

Thanks, MSNDude, for listening.