Google 100+ Ranking Factors

Google claims 100+ ranking factors in their algo - how many can we think of

[MarshallClark]

Google claims over 100 factors make up their current ranking algorithm. With so much SE experience here at WW I thought it would be an interesting exercise to see how many potential ranking factors we could come up with as a group. In the interest of getting responses from some of the more experienced members of the board (who might be reluctant to give up their secrets) I'd suggest that we limit the discussion just to listing potential factors and not going into their relative importance or specific optimization techniques relating to them for now.

I'll start off the list with 10 factors off the top of my head. Please feel free to add to the list or comment on the (possibly dubious) merits of my selections :)

1. PageRank
2. Keyword in inbound links
3. Keyword in Title
4. Keyword in TLD
5. Keyword in page name
6. Keyword density
7. Topical outbound links
8. Page size
9. Links from authority sites
10. Outbound links to topically related sites

[loanuniverse]

Keyword density in page containing inbound link

[pele]

DMOZ category and description listed

[MarshallClark]

13. Yahoo category and description listed
14. Keyword in alt tags
15. Keyword in internal links
16. Keyword in <H> tags

[edited by: MarshallClark at 1:25 am (utc) on Feb. 29, 2004]

[mifi601]

keyword language and what google thinks 'should' be 'near' it

[pele]

closeness of keywords together in the title
order of keywords
stemmed versions of keywords appearing as well

[Kirby]

Proximity of office to Brin & Page.
# of supermodel dates arranged for GG.

Seriously, this is rehashing what's been rehashed to death.

[canuck]

A few of the rehashings:

• Sept. 15, 2003:
  [webmasterworld.com...]

• Aug. 19, 2003:
  [webmasterworld.com...]

• May 28, 2003:
  [webmasterworld.com...]

• Sept. 9, 2002:
  [webmasterworld.com...]
  

[MarshallClark]

I might have been a bit unclear in what I was trying to discuss here. I'm not interested in rehashing all the techniques that can be used to improve rankings in Google. I'm more curious about how many potential sources of information for rankable criteria we can come up with - whether we know they are currently being used by Google or not.

For example - one of Brett's recent posts discussed a number of potential info sources available to Google through the Google toolbar:
- Entrance Clicks to a page.
- Exit clicks from a page.
- Date click occurred.
- Day click occurred.
- Time of day click occurred.
- Day of week click occurred.
- Time from last click to next click (time on page).
- Smile/Frowny face - was the tool bar button clicked on that page?
- Referral strings. (such as search strings at other search engines, that other wise
could not be tracked)
- Type of click (post, standard get, protocol - http/https/ftp/etc).
- Popup stopper - did the page have a popup?

I think a discussion on this type of topic would be useful since we could eventually pull together a single list of all the potential sources for rankable information available.

So...anyone have any other ideas for where Google might be able to find ranking information?