Do Search Engines Trust Your Website?
In 2004, Yahoo engineers published a document concerning "TrustRank." TrustRank is an algorithm that search engines use to determine relevant search results. In contrast to the PageRank algorithm, TrustRank does not measure by the number of links pointing to a website, but rather rates it based on the website's reputation. Some sites look for ways to rank higher than their content or site quality deserves and develop many techniques to achieve this. The pages of these sites can sometimes number in the hundreds, and search engines manually review a few pages, using the link structure to examine the rest.
Major Search Engines Today Use Some Form of TrustRank
Even though Google has not officially announced that it uses TrustRank, many search engine optimization professionals state that Google and other major search engines are improving the quality of search results by using the same concept. This means: it is not enough to simply get as many links as possible; the links your website receives from other reputable websites are also important, and thus increase the search engines' trust in your website.
How to Be a Trusted Site?
There are a few things you need to do to show that your website is trustworthy: First, it is important to get links from seed sites or from websites that have received links from seed sites. Seed websites are websites that have been manually approved as trusted sites by search engine owners. For example, if Apple.com is selected as a seed website by search engines, a link from Apple.com will positively affect your website's TrustRank. If Apple.com links to website X, and website X links to website Y, then a link from site Y to your website will still provide you with a good TrustRank.
