• Lesson Index:
• Overview
• Basic
• Google Toolbar and PR
• Alt and Title
• Funny Names
• Google Dance
• Googlebot
• Google Sandbox
• Trust Rank
• AdSense
• Google Ads
• Google Search
• AdSense for Content
• Earning Reports
• Channels
• Policies
• Filter Ads
• Promotion
• Keyword Optimization
• Information Rich Pages
• Link Exchanges
• No Tricks
• No Spam
• Web Forums
• Web Directories
• Other Ways
• Checking Up

TrustRank and Link Reputation

In this lesson, you will learn additional factors that will affect your Page Rank (PR). With these additional factors taken into account, some people call it TrustRank or link reputation.

In general, your PageRank (PR) will be higher if more sites links to you. As the Googlebot traverses the web, it counts links. The more links it finds linking to your site, the higher PR is given to your site. By not all incoming links are given the same weight. Incoming links from high PR sites are given more weight than those from low PR sites. Incoming links that are from sites related in topic to your site is given more weight than some random link in some random site. Yes, the Googlebot knows what topic your site it about. It reads the words on your pages and the word in and around the anchor links. I would even go as far as to suggest that it has a synonym dictionary and knows about related words.

TrustRank is similar to PageRank, but it takes into account whether your incoming links were non-reciprocated link and whether they are from website within the same category (or industry) as your site. Links that meets those two additional criteria are "trusted" more and given higher weight in the ranking calculation. Hence the name "TrustRank".

Don't just swap links with anybody. Google's algorithm is becoming increasingly intelligent. It can determine to some extent that your incoming links were swapped through links exchanges (also known as reciprocal linking). There is some credence that one-way links from another site will cause a higher increase in Page Rank than a link exchange -- with all other things being equal (of course). One-way links are when another site links to your site, but there is no link from your site back to theirs. The implication is that one-way links were freely given due to the usefulness of the linkee's content.

Another variable is whether the incoming link is from similar category as your own. If your site is about cooking chestnuts and you got an incoming link from an stock market finance site. This link is not given as much weight as an incoming link from another cooking website. The implication is that the former link is obtained through a link exchange.

Others would even go as far as Google having information to your registrar's information. So it will know how long you have had the domain name, and what other domains names you own, etc. See Jim Boykin's blog.

More info on link reputation in this Gord Collins article on Link Reputation .

Next

We start talking about how you can monetize your site with Google ads in the next lesson.