Google's Cutts: No Such Thing As Trust Rank

Dec 6, 2011 - 8:34 am 10 by

Google TrustThe concept of trustrank dates back several years but is it something Google uses?

Not according to a video from Google's Matt Cutts, at least not by name. In the video, Matt said, "It's not that we have something specifically called trust rank." Google has a trust factor, but it is made of several ranking algorithm factors, which may be referred to "trust."

Here is his video:

Here is the transcript:

0:00
0:01 Today's question comes from Canada.
0:03 And the question is from JZ Becker, who wants to know, can
0:08 you talk a bit about ranking signals like trust?
0:10 We hear these mentioned from time to time by Googlers, but
0:13 there's no official documentation available from
0:16 Google on the topic.
0:18 Great question.
0:19 Trust is sort of a catch-all term that we use.
0:23 So PageRank is the most well known type of trust. It's
0:27 looking at links and how important those links are.
0:30 So if you have a lot of very high quality links, then you
0:32 tend to earn a lot of trust with Google.
0:35 There's other signals.
0:36 There's over 200 different signals that
0:37 we use in our ranking.
0:39 But you can kind of break them down into this notion of sort
0:42 of trust and how well you match a particular query.
0:45 So how topical you are.
0:47 What's your information retrieval score?
0:48 Just on the merits of what the user typed in.
0:51 PageRank is one of these trust-type algorithms that's
0:54 trying to figure out--
0:55 we use several words--
0:56 reputation, trust, authority.
1:00 And it's not that we have something specifically called
1:03 trust rank, or we have something specifically called
1:06 authority rank, or something like that.
1:08 We're basically just trying to say, in the general scheme of
1:11 things, how much reputation, or how much are we willing to
1:15 believe that this is a high quality page, or a high
1:17 quality site?
1:18 Those sorts of things.
1:19 So in general, what you want to have is a
1:21 very reputable site.
1:23 But you also want to have a site that's about, or a page
1:25 that's about, the topic that the user typed in.
1:27 So in an ideal world, you've got both.
1:29 It's very high on the reputation scale, but it's
1:31 also exactly what the user was looking for in terms of typing
1:34 in and finding a match for what they were typing.
1:37 So we use a lot of different words like
1:39 trust, reputation, authority.
1:40 And PageRank is a specific example of
1:44 those sorts of things.
1:45 But we mean it in a more general sense.
1:47 It's not, typically, a specific algorithm.
1:49 It's just trying to figure out how much-- if a regular user
1:52 saw this, maybe without even seeing a query at all--
1:55 how much would they consider it a high quality page?
1:57 How much would they consider it really useful, as far as
2:00 being able to answer whatever questions that
2:02 particular site was about?
2:04 Hope that helps.
2:06

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Image credit: trust image on ShutterStock.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Follow

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 27, 2024

Mar 27, 2024 - 4:00 pm
Google Ads

Google Local Service Ads Sends Email Asking You To Upload Photos

Mar 27, 2024 - 7:51 am
Google Maps

European Hotels Can Remove Pricing Information From Google Hotel Search

Mar 27, 2024 - 7:41 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

SEOs, Please Don't Remove Contact Us & About Us Pages

Mar 27, 2024 - 7:31 am
Misc Google

Google Search Developer Docs Gain AI Generated Help Features

Mar 27, 2024 - 7:21 am
Google Maps

Google Local Reviews Reactions Notice

Mar 27, 2024 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Best Google AdSense Tips