As I am sure many of you remember, a few years ago Google trademarked the term "TrustRank". There was a lot of discussion at the time regarding how TrustRank would be used, if and when it might be implemented, and what effect TrustRank might have on rankings. These discussions seem to have quickly died down, however, as very little information has come out regarding the use of anything "TrustRank" related from Google.
Anyway, after the flurry of posts regarding the recent update of toolbar pagerank data over the past week, I decided to take a closer look at the data that the toolbar actually sends to Google, and what information Google is actually collecting. So I set about collecting data, and as I was reading through the logs, I saw a toolbar request that follows the pagerank request from the toolbar whenever a toolbar user visits a new domain:
http://sb.google.com/safebrowsing/update?client=navclient-auto-ffox&appver=2.0.0.8&version=goog-white-domain:1:23,goog-white-url:1:371,goog-black-url:1:15788,goog-black-enchash:1:37185
More interesting, I think, was the response:
Server: TrustRank Frontend
I have not had much time to investigate this yet, and I haven't really picked the data that is sent and returned apart, but I think it is interesting that TrustRank is actually being used. I haven't seen any feedback from this tool - I don't see any indicator in the toolbar, for example, telling me what the TrustRank of the page is, or if there is a problem. But then again, I might not be visiting sites that are bad enough.
It is possible that this function has not been fully implemented yet.
Do any of you have further information about the use or implementation of TrustRank? Theories and hearsay will be accepted, provided they are marked as such, and not too paranoid...