If you will remember a few months ago I dispelled the importance of Google’s PageRank in organic search engine ranking position (SERP). The argument has been blazing for a while now, but I think that most professional search engine optimization (SEO) experts now agree with my side of the argument. PageRank just doesn’t mean that much anymore. Now what?
You wonder where you should spend your efforts to get those highly prized organic SERPs. Just like SEO, the answer is complicated yet simple. When you get right down to it, SEO is an exercise in common sense. And so is the answer to what has replaced PageRank as one of the most important factors in high rankings. We’ll call it Google Trust and Authority.
Fundamentally, Google Trust and Authority is similar to PageRank, it just involves a few more elements and springs from a different source. I’m still evolving my opinion on Google Trust and Authority and I think most SEOs are, as well. Aspects of Trust and Authority may be independent from each other in the algorithm and some aspects maybe tied together.
One thing remains the same, the backlinks that you have are still important and so is the anchor text. The importance of where those links are has changed whether they are at the bottom of page, top of page, what is the Authority of the site your links appear on, etc.
What is Trust in the eyes of Google? As you might expect, only Google knows exactly what Trust is, but I suspect it has something to do with the age of a domain name, who owns the domain name, what kind of activities have been going on with the domain and sister domains. Do these domains hang out in bad parts of town with other thugs (aka spammers). Or are you hanging out with respected domains that have something to offer to WWW users. I think Google, in part, is looking at your track record.
What is Authority in the eyes of Google? The theory goes, Google has picked out a bunch of Authority Seed sites (like maybe NASA) and authority flows from those sites like PageRank. So, the closer you are to these Authority Seeds in your backlinking structure the more authority you have. Think of it like “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”. Obviously the person only one degree from Mr. Bacon has more authority on how he likes his eggs compared to the person that is six degrees away.
If you think about it, it makes sense. I’m sure that I have over simplified Google Trust and Authority in this post, but I think that this will get your wheels turning and allow your give PageRank a rest. You may be interested in reading a related article over at SEO by the Sea written quite a while back about this very subject when Google applied for a patent that might control some of this.
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Will Google be issuing some sort of quantitative ranking for Trust and Authority that’s similar to page rank?
In other words, how can we measure Trust and Authority?
@john Don’t expect a PageRank type score…. but you can use PageRank to give you an idea of the Trust and Authority of a site. Don’t ignore those PageRank scores, just realize what it really means.
Nowadays the problem is to get higher google trust, but nobody can provide with exact information on where it could be taken or even measured, I can’t find any option in google toolbar allowing me to check it.
Thanks for the clarification. Good to know that PR is connected to Trust and Authority.
wohoo here it goes again new technique for PR..but where exactly it will rank can any one give me clear cut idea??
i enjoyed your blog, thanks for posting.
You’re right on point.
When doing an SEO analysis with Market Samurai I started to notice pages with a low PR outrank pages with a higher PR.
I wonder, if you have a website that sells cookies and gain an authority link from NASA, will that help?
Well written article this is something we have been trying to put into practice for a few weeks now
Good luck getting that link. But yes, I think it would help. What if Nasa was doing a fund raiser and they designated such a “cookie maker” as the official Nasa cookie maker? That would make the cookie maker important right? I think so. And so would Google. Relevant links may be stronger, but don’t discount the power of a link just because its not related.
Just when we thought we understood the game, they change the rules. Thanks for this post, it was most illuminating, and now has me going back to the drawing board.
So you really think that PR mean nothing anymore? You may be right i have some sites that rank well and have a low PR
I want to be clear… PageRank does mean something. PageRank indicates how popular your page is as far as linkage is concerned. Higher PageRank will allow the page to be visited by the robots more often and probably give a domain with a lot of high PR pages more pages in the index.
Hey i like your post but i think PR still matters.
Google is always a step ahead…a lot ot energy wasted to get high PR. way that makes sense is to think like google. the consumer is king
Hi,
So if “Google Trust and Authority” now replace Page Rank, what do you suggest as a good metrics mechanism?
Thanks,
John Moss
Thanks for info.
Eh…, so like in real life it is more important who you know than what and how you are doing your job.
I just started to build backlinks, and have PR 3, but half of my pages are not indexed, so i only hope that with more backlinks, google will index more content from my site.
Sure, PR still matters. Understanding how it really matters in the important part.
Aw, I wish building T&A were not that time consuming.
Google TrustRank, as I call it, is way more important than PageRank, in my opinion. I’ve had many arguments with people about this topic, as have you, and I’m frequently told that I am full of it. I’m glad to see that those of us who feel that Google cares about TrustRank more than PageRank are at last getting some proper recognition.
I suspect that domain age, whether or not a person uses WHOIS privacy, whether or not a privacy policy, disclaimer, disclosure, terms of service, etc. is present, and whether or not an online store, for example, has an SSL certificate and trust certifications are all possible factors Google may be taking into consideration. Of course, only Google knows.
I agree with your article content, If i would like to posting content comment on a blog other content. It must be consistent with what the author of the blog that request posted to this site top – ranking of websites as well as in this blog your comments to be impressed and authors agree anchor your content on their site. This is best way to search and link do follow blog easily. Thank for your sharing.
Thats interesting .. Authority and trust. is that something official that google came out with or is it something that everyone is suspecting it is.
Hey Donnie,
This is confusing! I thought “authority” was defined and/or conferred by PageRank? What about “trust”? I always assumed that Google determined your trustworthiness by the games you DIDN’T play and your avoidance of bad neighborhoods. As Site5Rebate remarked, there may be some additional criteria to the measure of trust, but is this new?
I’m not an SEO, so forgive my lack of understanding.
Cheers,
Mitch
You can tell people with experience from people who don’t have any by reading what they are saying about SEO. I find it rather ironic how most supposed SEO web designers really have know very little about on-page and off-page SEO. Glad to see you are not one of those guys.
PageRank is nothing more than a useful tool for analyzing a potential link source. Other than that, you have to focus on things like trust, especially things like trust. Without it, a link is nearly worthless.
Great article really helped understand a lot more than I did. I had noticed that my pr on different sites has not meant as much.
PageRank is pretty much useless now. Google keeps telling people not to obsess about it but everyone still does anyway.
It doesn’t matter if your PageRank is 10. If Google doesn’t trust you because you link to malware, or participate in some link farm, or link to dangerous web sites, you will not be listed good in search results. Web sites that are trustworthy and demonstrate trust by behaving accordingly will always rank higher.
SSL certificates, privacy policies, public whois information, etc.
Mitchell, Authority is not conferred by PageRank. I believe that trust and authority has its own unique place in the Google algorithm. PageRank, was once a primary factor in “ranking potential” for a page, but as people have learned to usurp PageRank it has become less important and will continue to become less important. I believe the primary benefit to PageRank right now is that indicates to Google how often the spider should visit you and it probably has something to do with indexation value. Having a high Pagerank will benefit SERPs.
Here’s the way I handle this, since it’s next to impossible to measure this – or at least not without doing tons of research – and even then, it’s still all guesswork.
Just use common sense. That tends to work best, in my opinion. Think like a Googler. If you worked for Google, would you trust the site? Would you believe it to be an authority in its niche? Now put your own hat back on. Would you be willing to share that site with a Googler? Would you be worried about telling a Googler that you trust that site?
Common sense will take you a long way. All the tools and measurements are just a little extra information when you aren’t sure if you can trust your own common sense or not.
Google is always a step ahead…a lot ot energy wasted to get high PR. way that makes sense is to think like google. the consumer is king
Nice post, I always said PR rank only matters to those who think it matters.
PR itself won’t do much itself to anyone’s bottom line, weather by traffic or dollars!
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Great post, I like the way that things are going. Everyone puts too much emphasis on PageRank, trust / authority rank is the future.
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interesting idea but sure that its the future?
I don’t think it’s the future. It’s the now.
I think that one of the problems with trust and authority really is that these things can be so hard to measure. PageRank is pleasantly easy on a scale of 0-10 even if the data can be months old. It will be interesting to see how SEO experts come up with ways to measure (and manipulate) these new metrics.
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i agree with this article google’s page rank is over rated. I just think if most would focus on the visitor and less on the SEO’s of the game there would be a change in the search engine world atleast that is mytocents
“Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” , I laughed my ass off
I agree with you, and it is clear now, since this post was made in May and it’s August now, PR is getting lower and lower in the eyes of Google. But you actually did oversimplify the authority and trust, but I think you couldn’t of said it better.
trust is easy to get, in a few years
But authority…