Trust Rank, fact or fiction?

[jumpenjuhosaphat]

I've read up on TR in a few places, and have seen some arguments that make sense, but I still don't know.....I know it exists, but has it been implemented? If so, what are the determining factors other than the TR of sites linking to you? Is a lack of TR the cause for the ?mythical? Google sandbox?

[John Scott]

I think that using "trustrank" will just confuse matters. Drop that termnology and the discussion will go a lot further.

[cessai]

^ i agree with him, it will be better if you will just drop this terminology.

[jumpenjuhosaphat]

You might not realize this, but that is sort of cryptic. Could you elaborate on what you mean? Is there a different terminology that I should use, or is trust rank a bad word of sorts? Sorry if I seem overly uninformed, but that's why I'm asking....

[John Scott]

TrustRank has been used by different professionals in different contexts to refer to entirely different algorthmic features.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrustRank

What most people mean when they talk about "trustrank" is actually outbound link weight.

Pages that link to bad neighborhoods lose outbound link weight.

Is that what you were referring to?

[jumpenjuhosaphat]

The algorithm that begins with something like 200 seed sites that are hand selected as "quality" and "trusted" sites. The so called "Trust Rank" trickles down by following the links from the seed sites and isn't based on link relevance or page rank. Is that outbound link weight?

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by jumpenjuhosaphat

The algorithm that begins with something like 200 seed sites that are hand selected as "quality" and "trusted" sites. The so called "Trust Rank" trickles down by following the links from the seed sites and isn't based on link relevance or page rank. Is that outbound link weight?

Yeah, I don't think that is in use. But that's just a guess, nothing more.

[Tyler Banfield]

Originally Posted by John Scott

I think that using "trustrank" will just confuse matters. Drop that termnology and the discussion will go a lot further.

Agreed, I've heard the term "trustrank" used to describe everything from what is discussed above to the age of a site

[jumpenjuhosaphat]

I've heard of more trust being given because of the length of domain name registration, but I never put to much faith in that, that's just a ridiculous notion.
Thanks for the answers.

[ninjashoes]

It sounds pretty logical to me. Some have already established that Dmoz and Yahoo dir give you better results than any other links. I see no reason why there wouldnt be more sites on that list.

[Chatmaster]

Originally Posted by jumpenjuhosaphat

The algorithm that begins with something like 200 seed sites that are hand selected as "quality" and "trusted" sites. The so called "Trust Rank" trickles down by following the links from the seed sites and isn't based on link relevance or page rank. Is that outbound link weight?

I have read the original paper done about Trustrankhttp://www.vldb.org/conf/2004/RS15P3.PDF (Yahoo! related) a while back just after Google registered the Trademark. But the spam fighting algo of Trustrank would not be practical for use by Google imo. Perhaps if it is tweaked up a bit more, but I cannot see it as described in the paper as being applied at the moment.

[bookworm-seo]

what's ironic is that trustrank's emphasis on old sites as seed sites with lots of TR has resulted in a new opportunity for spammers. What can I say? Google sucks