Breaking Google’s TrustRank Algorithm
October 18, 2007 by Pablo Palatnik
I stumbled upon Jon from WickedFire’s blog just browsing around and started came upon an interesting blog title and kept reading past post. So, he claims to have figured out Google’s TrustRank algo.
Google’s TR basically comes down to linking. I’m not an SEO expert nor claim be to, but some of the TrustRank issues seem to be somewhat obvious by now with so many people blogging and writing about SEO but if you read down John’s post, it’s not obvious at all. Now, if it holds true, that he can rank you for any keyword in Google (and I’m thinking rank well?) then that’s impressive but shouldn’t every SEO EXPERT be able to somewhat get you rankings? I mean, for the THOUSANDS of dollars (agencies can charge up to 20k+) to SEO, you better get me up there.
Anyway, he gave a good example of one of his findings:
“So let’s say the following domains are offering links for sale on their websites. We’ll use the niche they both target as “web hosting†and “web hosting reviews/ratingsâ€. Fine.
Domain 1: hostingreview.com – PageRank 1/10 – 1 sitewide link $5/mo
Domain 2: webhostingratings.com – PageRank 9/10 – 1 sitewide link $750/mo
Which would you choose?
I’ll bet without even thinking, you’d choose the PR9 domain, because you were basically taught to and “brought up†on the myth of PageRank and that it matters. Well, guess what. Domain 1 has a higher TrustRank score than Domain 2. Even though Domain 1 is a PR1 and Domain 2 is a PR9. How can this be? Easy. Google said so. You can go and do allllllll the backlinks, IBL, content, age, keyword checks your heart desires, and you will never find out WHY Google gives a higher TrustRank score to the shabby PR1 than the PR9 who seems to follow every rule every SEO will tell you matters. That’s because Google is brilliant. But brilliantly evil. Their link: command, doesn’t work the way you think it does. In fact, linking is just ONE of over 300+ variables on how a domain gains trust from Google.â€
You can visit his post here. He also states, “So again, linking is just ONE part. Yes, a major aspect, but not the defining part of it. I can assure you there are so many unreal variables that some of you would probably crap yourself if you knew just how evil Google really is, but how brilliant they are at making everyone hang on to every word and rumor they think up to keep us as sheep. Well, not anymore Google.â€
2005 Illustration by Aaron Wall:
So, we’ll see how this progresses and what people who purchase his service say about what he is offering which seems pretty cheap if he delivers…sounds good…hopefully it will work for those who are going for it.
In 2005, Aaron Wall defined Google TrustRank as having these key factors:
• automatically boost pages that have a high probablility of being good, as well as demote the rankings of pages that have a high probability of being bad.
• help search engines identify what pages should be good canidates for quality review
Some common ideas that TrustRank is based upon:
• Good pages rarely link to bad ones. Bad pages often link to good ones in an attempt to improve hub scores.
• The care with which people add links to a page is often inversely proportional to the number of links on the page.
• Trust score is attenuated as it passes from site to site.
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Comments (5)
Nice review of Trust Rank.
[...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptBreaking Google’s TrustRank Algorithm Published by Pablo Palatnik I stumbled upon Jon from … reading past post. So, he claims to have figured out Google’s TrustRank algo. Google’s TR basically … in Google (and I’m thinking rank well?) then that’s impressive but shouldn’t every SEO EXPERT be able [...]
Interesting points, but a slight problem. The Trustrank algorithm (http://www.vldb.org/conf/2004/RS15P3.PDF) is from Yahoo rather than Google.
Thanks for the link and the constructive criticism. I’m going to be posting a new entry on my blog to answer some good points you brought up.
PS – Why do people always spell my name correctly the first time they write it, but then spell it as “John” all other times?! Haha!
Trust rank, Page rank… Hmmm… How about SERP rank… It’s king in my book. As long as my sites on on the first pages nothing else matters.