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Link popularity is a measure of the
quantity and quality of other web sites that link to a
specific site on the World Wide Web. It is an example of the
move by search engines towards off-the-page-criteria to
determine quality content. It determines off-the-page-criteria
which add the aspect of impartiality to search engine
rankings.
Link popularity plays an important role in the visibility of a
web site among the top of the search results. Indeed, some
search engines require at least one or more links coming to a
web site, otherwise they will drop it from their index.
Some of the search engines such as Google use a special link
analysis system to rank web pages. Citations from other WWW
authors help to define a site's reputation. The philosophy of
link popularity is that important sites will attract many
links. Content-poor sites will have difficulty attracting any
links. Link popularity assumes that not all incoming links are
equal, as an inbound link from a major directory carries more
weight than an inbound link from an obscure personal home
page. In other words, the quality of incoming links counts
more than sheer numbers of them. |
