Related Sites

What does 'related' mean?

[ronin]

Google has a function called related sites which you can access by typing in

related:www.mysite.com

But sometimes (often?) the sites that are returned are not ones that share links with mysite.com or even share links with sites that share links with mysite.com.

Sometimes there is an obvious topic connection, sometimes not.

So what does 'related' refer to in this sense?
How is it calculated?
What implications does this have for Pagerank and for the SERPS?

[ga_ga]

Puzzled about this too, myself..

[marcs]

In my (limited) experience, it is in part related to sites linking to the site in question and other related sites being linked to from the same page(s).

For example, I have a site which links to 4 other sites which all use one of our services. If I check 'related:site1.com', the others will show up.

Sites which also link to those 4 same sites also show up in some cases. While I'm still as puzzled as to what exactly creates/defines the results, the above may give you some idea.

[mil2k]

yes marcs i agree with you. But sometimes i have heard people say that it also uses data collected from google toolbar.

[vitaplease]

As far as I understand:

Pages A,B,C, and D all link to Pages E,F,G and H.

Great chance E,F,G and H will all show up as related.

In real life this linking is not all that cleanly seperated between hubs and authorities, so C might also turn up as similar page because other interlinking may trigger that.

[webmasterworld.com...]

and this is also worth a try:

Touchgraph [webmasterworld.com]