Google Patent Places Emphasis On Permanent Links

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People at Google have been filing a lot of patents lately, including “Document Scoring Based On Link-Based Criteria, which are must reads for everyone, despite their dense language. Okay, they’re not really must-reads for everyone, but for anyone who wants a glimpse into the thinking of Google engineers concerning their algorhythm.

Analysis of United States Patent Application: 0070094255

Google spells out their philosophy on linkage in a comprehensive patent application. This applications confirms most SEOs suspicions, concerning “sandboxing” links and the like. Historical link data now has a lot to do with rankings.

The abstract tells you plenty about this patent and how links are treated.

A system may determine time-varying behavior of links pointing to a document, generate a score for the document based, at least in part, on the time-varying behavior of the links pointing to the document, and rank the document with regard to at least one other document based, at least in part, on the score.

There’s a ton of interesting points here, like:

• A method of watching how links appear and disappear on websites
• We can deduce Google tracks both a start point and an end point for links and develops a rate of link acquisition from that
• The will figure out the extent which the links appear and disappear - I assume that if your rate varies quite a bit from expected behavior, this might not be good
• Something else everyone has suspected: they track the rate of appearance of new links and the rate of disappearance of said links
• Document “freshness” is now calculated, and determined by incoming links
• Your document will be considered “stale” when new links stop coming in
• Link-weight is now given to fresh links and apparently “toned down” after the freshness period evaporates
• It appears on the surface, at least, that an influx of temporary links, if it was massive enough, could hurt you. This appears like an easy way for Google to combat co-operative advertising link networks
• Another factor is that the source of incoming links also contributes to the freshness factor of the document. The fresher the links to the linking document, the better it is for the linked document. Freshness really counts, as I expected.
• Google will keep a detailed record of your link details, including anchor text, and any changes thereof.

In essence, this confirms a number of matters of common wisdom, such as: acquire permanent links at a steady pace, rather than try and be a SuperNova, which ends up crashing. This document really spells out what Google plans of doing, or is already doing, with your link data, so check it out when you get a second.

What do you think of this newest Google patent?

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