Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
#1 - Do I get a bigger boost since the sites that send me direct traffic also tend to be large, well-read sites and thus more likely to have link popularity to pass on?
#2 - Am I being rewarded by Google for receiving traffic (identified by toolbar data, etc.)? Perhaps Google is using toolbar data in their attempt to identify unrelated paid links. Thus links that deliver traffic are relevant and will not be ignored.
#3 - Since the toolbar PR is very inaccurate, maybe the sites delivering no traffic have had a huge drop in PR and the toolbar is not yet updated.
#4 - Luck o' the Irish. Just maybe I am plain lucky picking a good site to be linked from?
What do you think?
I have noticed a bigger ranking boost from inbound links that generate referrals
It's the traffic to the pages your link is on that Google are noticing. It helps differentiate between links pages that are buried and never receive any traffic and references to quality sites on high traffic "useful" pages. A vote from a high traffic page is worth more and will result in more click referral traffic. The high traffic page has a higher "vote" than other pages, I think I read that in one of their patents? Anyone verify?
Not really overly useful as extra information because if you are targetting quality links those links will generally be on high traffic pages. Low quality links tend to be on low traffic pages anyway.
A vote from a high traffic page is worth more and will result in more click referral traffic. The high traffic page has a higher "vote" than other pages, I think I read that in one of their patents? Anyone verify?
I can't cite your's exactly, but this could apply:
9. The method of claim 6, wherein determining a freshness of the document includes: determining the freshness of the document as a function of a freshness of the links.10. The method of claim 6, wherein determining a freshness of the document includes: determining the freshness of the document as a function of a freshness of linking documents containing the links.
11. The method of claim 1, wherein determining time-varying behavior of links pointing to a document includes: determining freshness of the links, and assigning weights to the links based, at least in part, on the freshness of the links; and wherein generating a score for the document includes: scoring the document based, at least in part, on the weights assigned to the links pointing to the document.
Link Based Scoring [appft1.uspto.gov]
Interesting when you combine it with:
15. A method, comprising: receiving a search query; performing a search based, at least in part, on the search query to identify a group of search result documents; determining a staleness of a search result document in the group of search result documents; determining whether a stale document is preferred for the search query; generating a score for the search result document based, at least in part, on the staleness of the search result document and whether a stale document is preferred for the search query; and ranking the search result document with regard to at least one other one of the search result documents based, at least in part, on the score.16. The method of claim 15, wherein determining whether a stale document is preferred for the search query includes: determining whether users previously selected an older document that was ranked lower over a fresher document that was ranked higher in a set of search results relating to the search query or a similar search query; and identifying the search query as a search query for which a stale document is preferred when the users previously selected an older document that was ranked lower over a fresher document that was ranked higher in the set of search results relating to the search query or the similar search query.
Document Scoring Based on Query Analysis [appft1.uspto.gov]
What is a good backlink? One that draws some clicks. That pretty much rules out light gray links in the footer, you know? Or most links from pages that are flooded with other links; or links on pages where the readership is there for a different purpose - etc.
It's a natural, naive kind of "litmus test" - it asks "will at least some people click here?"
...and because of this diversity and because of our emphasis on freshness and highlighting fresh results...
From the Udi Manber Interview [webmasterworld.com]. (The interview is linked in the preceding thread.)
I really think the highlighted points from the two patent applications have a direct impact on this situation.
[edited by: TheMadScientist at 8:49 pm (utc) on April 17, 2008]
