According to insider sources the search engine giant has been granted a new patent entitled, “Determining Quality of Linked Documents.” In my personal opinion this patent has given me a better insight regarding Google’s tactics as far as the influence of a link in comparison to search engine results. It also allowed me to prove that doing your own tracking and testing is crucial to your success.

Here is what I have been able to deduce from my understanding of the patent:

• Google tends to give links from affiliated pages a maximum value.

• My research shows that Google is more likely to assign individual value to likes from independent web pages.

What the hell are you talking about Mr. SEO Bully? I am glad you asked! All of this means that 3 links from an affiliated site would carry more value than a single link (so far nothing special, but here comes the catch). The total value of all links from an affiliated site is limited (ahhh! are you starting to get the picture?)

Ok here is a further breakdown – many of the online services that we use, have sites that are affiliated with one another. Users will be limited to the number of links they can place on these affiliated sites. No one is sure exactly what that number is, one indication however is when you are trying to move up the search engine rankings, and it appears that nothing is working… You have hit the wall. You need to start digging for other resources to generate backlinks to your site.

I guess your next question is how in the hell can Google tell if a site is affiliated or not? If that was not your next question it should have been. If it was exactly what you were thinking BROVO give yourself a pat on the back.

Google uses several techniques to draw their conclusion on which sites are affiliated or not. Interlinking is one such technique. Sites that are closely interlinked to one another as compared to the average page on the site (in Google’s eyes) may be considered to be affiliated.

Hostnames is another method used. Pages that have matching domain names or subdomains stand a good chance of being considered as an affiliated site.

This is the method that is going to kill many Internet Marketers rankings. The other methods thus far can easily be worked around, but there is no work around for this method. Google is using IP addresses, more specifically the first couple of numbers. If they are identical then Google may consider those pages as somehow affiliated.

The monitoring of IP addresses is nothing new with Google. However it is now official, it is part of their strategy for determining the quality and value of links. Many of my friends get upset when I reject them for asking me to link to their blog or website. When I try to explain my reasoning they hear nothing but blah, blah, blah and that is why I cannot do it. I give many of them discounted hosting on one of my servers since they are just getting started. ALL HOSTING COMPANIES use what is known as shared IP Addresses. By me linking to them or vise-a-versa it would lower the quality of my links, thus causing me to drop in search engine rankings. The end result could possibly cost me thousands of dollars a month.

The last thing that Google takes into consideration according to their new patent is visitors. They consider web pages that share the same visitors during the same browsing session as possible affiliated websites.

I mentioned earlier that none of this was anything new. In fact Google filed this patent a couple of years ago, and it was just granted recently. What this means is that they have been applying these methods for sometime, but it has just been made public.

All in all what the patent does is confirm what I have been preaching for a long time now. Your goal as an Internet Marketer should be to get as many high quality links from a variety of websites as possible. DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN AUTOMATED LINKING SCHEMES. DO NOT USE AUTOMATIC LINKING SOFTWARE!

I have yelled this from the highest rooftops for years… The quality of your links are WAY more important than the quantity of your links.

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