Search Engines TrustRank and P3P

[Webnauts]

As every SEO already should know, TrustRank places a core vote of trust on a seed set of reviewed sites to help search engines identify pages that would be considered useful from pages that would be considered spam.

Obviously having a privacy policy doesn’t mean that you are good or bad at keeping the personal information secret. It just means that you have formalized and publicly stated the rules.

So do you think implementing P3P could boost a site's Trust Rank?

[incrediblehelp]

Probably not. I think true TR comes from backlinks.

[Webnauts]

Jaan I am very sure that the main TrustRank factor are IBLs. My question is, if P3P is also a factor. Major or minor is irrelevant.

Any thoughts?

[incrediblehelp]

Not for sure, my guess would be minor.

[Webnauts]

LOL.

I think it is funny though when I mention some possible factors and every time I get the answer that they are minor.

If I put all factors together I already know, they do make a big factor!

Every factor is one piece of the search engines algos. Or?

If I ignore all minor factors, what is left over then?

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

I think it is funny though when I mention some possible factors and every time I get the answer that they are minor.

Yup that is true, but like I said before I feel all these minor items fall under three pillars, we all must follow:

1. Relevant authoritative back links. Link baiting and social media.
2. Accessibility in themed structure. Making your website easy to crawl and index. Information architecture is key.
3. Basic on-site SEO factors. Fresh original content.

3 SEO Main Principles, Yes Virginia It Is That Easy - Jaan’s Search Marketing Blog - Toledo, Ohio

[crankydave]

While I think that is is possible the end user may place more "trust" in a site I'm not so sure that the way in which the information is formatted or presented would make a site more authoritative or trustworthy to a SE.

The way in which information is formatted or presented says nothing about the information itself.

ETA... An example I can think of would be an ecommerce site that displays the authorize.net seal. While this can cause the shopper to place more "trust" in a site it really says nothing to a SE.

Dave

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by crankydave

While I think that is is possible the end user may place more "trust" in a site I'm not so sure that the way in which the information is formatted or presented would make a site more authoritative or trustworthy to a SE.

The way in which information is formatted or presented says nothing about the information itself.

ETA... An example I can think of would be an ecommerce site that displays the authorize.net seal. While this can cause the shopper to place more "trust" in a site it really says nothing to a SE.

Dave

Dave I hope I am not misinformed about the fact that having SSL on a web site or the domain expiry date are TrustRank factors. Can't all that be changed any time?

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Dave I hope I am not misinformed about the fact that having SSL on a web site or the domain expiry date are TrustRank factors. Can't all that be changed any time?

Using authorize.net and displaying their seal does not mean there's SSL on a website. Expirey dates can be lengthened, not shortened.

Correct me if I'm wrong but couldn't a site opt not to use P3P at any time?

Dave

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by crankydave

Correct me if I'm wrong but couldn't a site opt not to use P3P at any time?

Sure you can. But here is the statement of W3C why it is useful:

Originally Posted by w3C

P3P uses machine readable descriptions to describe the collection and use of data. Sites implementing such policies make their practises explicit and thus open them to public scrutiny. Browsers can help the user to understand those privacy practises with smart interfaces. Most importantly, Browsers can this way develop a predictable behavior when blocking content like cookies thus giving a real incentive to eCommerce sites to behave in a privacy friendly way. This avoids the current scattering of cookie-blocking behaviors based on individual heuristics imagined by the implementer of the blocking tool which will make the creation of stateful services on the web a pain because the state-retrievel will be unpredictable.

Therefore as robots are user-agents, I thought that it could make a difference. What do you think?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by crankydave

Using authorize.net and displaying their seal does not mean there's SSL on a website. Expirey dates can be lengthened, not shortened.

I fully agree with you here. But what is about domains? Can't they also be shortened like being cancelled? Or lengthened upon request?

[kgun]

As an economist, I will say that here is a strong relation between credibility, P3P and branding.

But who knows if the site is a mafia site? You have to make a deeper due dilligence than just looking at some banners.

Links:
Due Diligence Checklists - The Ones Used by Professionals

DUE DILIGENCE INVESTIGATION & FRAUD INVESTIGATION DATA - Boston, Massachusetts

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Sure you can. But here is the statement of W3C why it is useful:


Therefore as robots are user-agents, I thought that it could make a difference. What do you think?

The problem I see is that if something can be changed at will, at any time, by the site owner, why would that "something" make a site more "trustworthy" to a SE?

I'm of the belief that external factors are what influence "trust" when it comes to the SE's and internal factors are what influence "trust" when it comes to your visitors.

Let's take a SSL certificate for example. Is an ecommerce site that does not have one and only takes telephone orders more "trustworthy" because they don't collect and/or store sensitive data or less "trustworthy" because they don't have one?

Is a site that does not have a privacy policy because they don't collect information less or more "trustworthy" than a site that does?

Dave

[Webnauts]

Dave I found a short article which I think you might would like to have a look before we go on: SEO - How To Make Google Trustrank Trust You

[Webnauts]

Side Note: I am aware that TrustRank is the use of a seed list of trusted web sites that have been reviewed by humans at Google, Stanford and other information retrieval (IR) professionals to be free of spam type link tactics.

But no one can tell how the Google TrustRank Algorithms looks like.

Another interesting resource: http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/2004-17

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Dave I found a short article which I think you might would like to have a look before we go on: SEO - How To Make Google Trustrank Trust You

Thanx for the link John.

As I read it, pure speculation on the authors part.

As far as the length of domain registration, perhaps. Since "churn and burn" MFA site producers don't really care about whether or not a domain gets banned, I can see where a longer registration may have some influence. You can lengthen registration time but to the best of my knowledge, you cannot shorten it, so a longer registration may assist with the "trust" factor but I can't verfy that.

Now the SSL part. Any merchant/business that is collecting and/or storing credit card or other personal information is required by law to secure that information. You would need to check at the federal and local levels to find out precisely what is required. Any merchant/business that is NOT using SSL to encript the information is more than stupid. Nevermind what the SE's think. The customers would never provide you with a thing.

If SSL were indeed a factor to the SE's when determining the "trustworthiness" of a site you'd see line at the "SSL Window" with everyone adding SSL to a page on their site making any speculated benefit moot. Not to mention that as far as the SE's are concerned SSL pages are invisible. How does an invisible page provide any benefit?

In my wildest imagination I can't see where a SSL cert tells a SE anything. Your potential customers/visitors, yes but not a SE. Ever been to a SSL secured phishing site?

Side Note: I am aware that TrustRank is the use of a seed list of trusted web sites that have been reviewed by humans at Google, Stanford and other information retrieval (IR) professionals to be free of spam type link tactics.

But no one can tell how the Google TrustRank Algorithms looks like.

Another interesting resource: http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/2004-17

The TrustRank white paper is a Yahoo thing. Not Google.

CrankyDave » Blog Archive » TrustRank and Yahoo

Dave

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by crankydave

Thanx for the link John.

Always welcome Dave. And by the way I am glad you are back at WPW. I really missed the debates with you.

Originally Posted by crankydave

As I read it, pure speculation on the authors part.

I fully agree.

Originally Posted by crankydave

As far as the length of domain registration, perhaps. Since "churn and burn" MFA site producers don't really care about whether or not a domain gets banned, I can see where a longer registration may have some influence. You can lengthen registration time but to the best of my knowledge, you cannot shorten it, so a longer registration may assist with the "trust" factor but I can't verfy that.

Well could be that you are right here. But what if I would sell my domain, for example webnauts.net, and someone sets up a site about lingerie? What should be the effect there?

Originally Posted by crankydave

Now the SSL part. Any merchant/business that is collecting and/or storing credit card or other personal information is required by law to secure that information. You would need to check at the federal and local levels to find out precisely what is required. Any merchant/business that is NOT using SSL to encript the information is more than stupid. Nevermind what the SE's think. The customers would never provide you with a thing.

You are obviously right.

Originally Posted by crankydave

If SSL were indeed a factor to the SE's when determining the "trustworthiness" of a site you'd see line at the "SSL Window" with everyone adding SSL to a page on their site making any speculated benefit moot. Not to mention that as far as the SE's are concerned SSL pages are invisible. How does an invisible page provide any benefit?
In my wildest imagination I can't see where a SSL cert tells a SE anything. Your potential customers/visitors, yes but not a SE. Ever been to a SSL secured phishing site?

Well I also agree that using SSL is a trust and credibility factor, at least for the visitors, and as you said it is a federal and local requirement. If the pages are invisible to the SE, does not suppose to mean that SE cannot recognize that you are using SSL on your site, if you or linking to https (secure) pages.

Last year we messed up with the SSL implementation on the webnauts.net site, and appeared in Googles index all our pages double. Http and https versions.
Well I know it was a canonicalization issue, but that was the evidence that search engines can tell if you are using SSL, if you are linking from at least one of your static pages to at least one of the secure pages. And that is how we came up writing a tutorial about that issue: SEO Workers Tutorial: Search Engine Indexing of Secure Pages

Originally Posted by crankydave

The TrustRank white paper is a Yahoo thing. Not Google.

CrankyDave » Blog Archive » TrustRank and Yahoo

I knew that Dave. Sorry.

[Webnauts]

And one off topic question: Doesn't this count as a quality backlink? P3P Validator sub window

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

And one off topic question: Doesn't this count as a quality backlink? P3P Validator sub window

I don't see why it wouldn't count as a link. As far as "quality" goes, there's no anchor text first off. Also, it resides on a subdomain. Since Google still appears to treating subdomains as separate sites, I would guess that the link profile, etc. of the subdomain itself would come into play and not neccessarily that of the root.

Dave

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by crankydave

I don't see why it wouldn't count as a link. As far as "quality" goes, there's no anchor text first off. Also, it resides on a subdomain. Since Google still appears to treating subdomains as separate sites, I would guess that the link profile, etc. of the subdomain itself would come into play and not neccessarily that of the root.

Dave

Great point Dave. Well then it makes sense to have a P3P, as you can get a back link from W3C for free, and not for $1000 as they were asking for last year.
Do you remember that?

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Great point Dave. Well then it makes sense to have a P3P, as you can get a back link from W3C for free, and not for $1000 as they were asking for last year.
Do you remember that?

LOL! Yes John I do.

Dave

[wige]

Just two points...

About changing registration expirations, I take it you are referring to SSL certificates. Other than revoking the certificate, the dates can't be changed. When you renew, you are actually given a new certificate with a new start and end date. Revocation is done by the issuer (the browser first checks that the certificate is valid for your URL, has a valid date range, and finds out who issued it. The browser then checks with the issuer to see if the cert was revoked).

Also, SEs can see SSL encrypted pages. There just aren't many that show up in the results because most are accessed through forms that the Search Engines don't crawl. ssl test page - Google Search will give the result about #5 for Fortify, which is https.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by wige

Also, SEs can see SSL encrypted pages. There just aren't many that show up in the results because most are accessed through forms that the Search Engines don't crawl. ssl test page - Google Search will give the result about #5 for Fortify, which is https.

I agree. I mentioned that in a previous post of mine in this thread.

But the question remains: Does SSL implementation affect TrustRank?