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The ultimate objective of the Google ranking factor is to provide users with the most relevant search results. TrustRank, an important aspect of Google’s algorithm, is significant in determining website credibility and rankings. Let us understand what the term ‘TrustRank’ exactly means.
What exactly is TrustRank?
TrustRank is an algorithm designed to help search engines differentiate between websites that are reliable and unreliable. It was proposed in 2004 by Stanford University’s Zoltan Gyongyi, Hector Garcia-Molina, and Yahoo’s Jan Pedersen in their paper “Combating Web Spam with TrustRank.”They claimed that PageRank, as a quantitive metric, was highly susceptible to manipulation and was ineffective in determining a website’s credibility.
TrustRank analyses web content, backlinks, and external links to determine if the material relates to a particular user’s search intent. It can differentiate between unique text and spam content based on this data. Though the algorithm has no direct connection with the position of a web page in the search results, a high score may indicate that the content is distinctive and valuable to users.
How the TrustRank algorithm works
The main concept of TrustRank is to help search engine combat web spam, and it does this by measuring the ‘trust signals.’ The trustworthiness of your web page is determined by measuring the distance between a page on your site and a “seed site.” Google considers a “seed site” to be authoritative and reliable. You can find seed sites for almost any niche.
To put it simply, consider a Website A has a link from the seed site Wikipedia; it is only one link away from the seed site, which is a positive thing. If Wikipedia connects to Website B, which then links to Website A, the effect is still positive but weaker than in the first instance. In short, the closer you are to the “seed site,” the better your Trust Rank.
Does Google make use of TrustRank?
“Not exactly,” would be my shortest response! There are countless references to Google TrustRank on the web, but it is unreliable to state that it uses TrustRank.
Although the algorithm was initially created by Yahoo! & Stanford engineers, Google has confirmed that they also use “TrustRank” in their algorithm. They even trademarked it in 2006 under the patent name, ‘Search Result Ranking Based on Trust.’ However, it was the name of an anti-phishing filter; therefore, Google’s TrusRank was not the same as what Yahoo was working on.
Google has also filed for a patent that stated, “A search engine system delivers search results that are ranked according to a measure of trust.” In general terms, Google up-ranks the websites they trust. To measure that trust, they use the TrustRank.
Google TrustRank determines the trust factors for every single document. The trust factors are utilized to adjust the document’s information retrieval scores. PageRank is one of Google’s “trust-type” algorithms. Apart from “trust,” Google employs terms like “reputation” and “authority.”
According to SEO experts, Google’s perception of the website’s trustworthiness may be impacted by the following factors:
- Website’s PageRank
- Quality of content
- Quality of backlinks
- Author’s authority
- Website’s age
