New Google patent: How to judge the value of a link

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New Google patent: How to judge the value of a link
Axandra Search Engine Facts Newsletter
August 31, 2010

Google has been granted a new patent with the name Determining quality of linked documents some days ago. The patent might give us further insight on how Google judges the influence of a link on the search engine positions of a web page.

How does Google limit the value of a link?

According to the patent, Google might do the following:

• Google assigns a maximum value to links that come from affiliated pages.
• Google might assign individual values to links from independent pages.

That means that three links from an affiliated website carry more value than a single link but the total value of all links from the affiliated website is limited.

How can Google recognize affiliated web pages?
The patent shows a number of methods that Google can use to determine the affiliation of web pages:

• Interlinking: websites that are more closely interlinked to each other than the average pages on the websites might be considered to be affiliated.
• Hostnames: web pages that have the same domain name or subdomains that are on the same domain are probably affiliated.
• IP addresses: if the first two or three components of the IP addresses are identical, the web pages might be affiliated.
• Visitors: web pages that share many visitors during the same browsing session can be considered to be affiliated.

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