Authority vs. Popularity in Search Engine Rankings

[snakeair]

Very interesting blog post. Please read it before you post a comment.

When search engines return web pages in search results in response to a query, most people assume that the pages being show are the ones that a search engine has decided are the “best” pages in response to their search terms. But what does the word “best” mean in that context? The search engines attempt to show pages that are both relevant to the query (and the intent of a searcher), and are popular.

Google’s PageRank algorithm is a popularity algorithm based upon a citation analysis approach to finding pages, or as Google Founder Larry Page noted in Improved Text Searching in Hypertext Systems (pdf):

There are other ways of measuring popularity that the search engines may be using as well, such as the....

Continued at: http://www.seobythesea.com/2011/10/a...gine-rankings/

[bogs]

totally agree with that, its like a car manufacturers website might not always be on top of related search queries, coz' there are other related sites that offers much better content and features..

[Arkan]

Form my experience row popularity based on anhor text spam form many many different root domains will always beat even the highest authority. It is sad but is true in my opinion

[noelagnote]

Popularity used to rule in search engine rankings but now search engine is wiser and now they give more weight on the authority of a site.

[sfimf]

Sadly only in poorly selected(or unintentionally selected)by my competition have I noticed a difference in rankings with authority. Very frustrating as it literally is unintentionally I believe.