PageRank and a link from another site is supposed to be a “vote” for the site being linked to. Unfortunately, buying listings, link exchanges, and a variety of other factors devaluate the impartiality of PageRank. In addition to PageRank and all other algorithm factors, why not base popularity on bookmarks? Adding a site to your favorites or bookmarking is the only true and unbiased “vote” for a site. We don’t bookmark spam or junk sites, we only bookmark the best and most relevant sites. Something like this can be so specific that it not only measures popularity but also relevancy by tracking what the search terms or link text were when a page got bookmarked. It would also be very tough to manipulate since you would need thousands of individuals to make an impact.
How can it be done? I’ll leave that to the brilliant Google and Microsoft engineers. If they can’t read bookmarks already saved I’m sure there are ways around that. Maybe Microsoft can come up with a new IE that can capture info on pages being bookmarked. For Google, how about a bookmark list in the Toolbar or a “bookmark this result” link in the search results display?
Has such an idea been discussed before? If not, Google and Microsoft can feel free to chip-in and make me a millionaire… or at least list my site at the top of the rankings :)
