IBL's, Total Pages & search result positions

[Optimus]

Not sure if this has been covered before, but does anyone know if there is a correlation between the number of IBL's as a percentage of a site's total number of pages and the position those sites occupy in google SERPS?

I have just been checking a competitive two word travel search (using a well known keyword analysis tool), and noticed that the top 10 spots are held by sites whose IBL's (as factored by google) vary between 6% and 44% of the total number of pages for those sites.

Included in the top 10 results are a number of small sites, which have a high percentage of IBL's when weighted against their total number of pages. They are not bad sites, but neither are any of them much good in terms of deep content and user satisfaction.

My site, which is currently around position 15 for that search term, only has 2.5% IBL's when weighted against total pages (a few thousand). Could it be part of the reason I have lost a lot of ground on this search term?

Not sure if this is a dumb question, but with all that's been going on in the SERPS and the deafening silence from google, perhaps there is no dumb question right now.

[tedster]

My take on this is that you may see some correlation in the numbers, but it's probably not a direct cause and effect. Factors such as PageRank circulation through all the pages plus the supplemental index can create this apparent pattern. And Google's measure of a backlink profile goes far beyond a numeric count, as we all know.

Included in the top 10 results are a number of small sites

There may be another factor here - shrouded in mystery but real enough. Matt Cutts has mentioned several times over the years that Google takes some special steps to help out the very small business - the Mom and Pop. I've seen this effect often enough for sites I helped friends with to know that it's real.