did you ever read the [url=http://decweb.ethz.ch/WWW7/1921/com1921.htm]original pagerank treatise[/url]
Yeah, of course, its classic SEO reading. Thats how you stay ahead of google, search for white papers, they are still uni boys at heart and very keen on anything written by someone with a Ph.D.
i've been reading up on this. my opinion: maybe in the future but not so far. the google algo still looks pretty simple.
Do you think they will backdate the TLA algo if they bring it in?
yeah. just the way they started using "hilltop" in march. have you read the hilltop documents yet?
Yeah, I have a pile of whitepapers on my desk. so we may have to act now like TLA is in effect or get hit when it comes in.
So is the main thrust of the TLA concept the freshness of the links, or does it also try to detect linkage that could be considered unnatural in a temporal sense, like tons of high PR links appearing at once without the corresponding support of even more smaller PR links?
not the freshness of the link, a continuing supply of links is the most important thing, a spike in the links will loook unnatural and not benifit in the long run, I dont believe PR is counted though.
i tell ya. i am not convinced at all that google is using any sophisticated methods of link valuing these days. not to say it won't happen but its not happening now.
On a large scale I agree but I believe they have been experimenting with some of this technology recently in the serps with regards filters, also if the effects of TLA get backdated I want to be ready
one thing for google. more dollars from i.p.o. means more payroll. since they make so much of their money from adwords its likely they have plenty of editors now. i think the reason so many webmasters report different experiences in different keyword categories is because some of the categories have had the algo hand-edited by google. certain sectors are nearly impossible to rank in using techniques that work in other ones.
or else the algo is automatically modified depending on the competitiveness of the keywords.
could be. but someone still had to key in what 'competitiveness' meant.
It could be worked out by the ammount of exact terms returned, the ammount of searches run or a number of other factors.
let's face it. after getting so much money after going public google is bound to hire people. im sure a lot of the people they hire are anti-spam. more and more keyphrases are going to get hand-edited i think.
Hand edited wont work, it didnt work for yahoo, and it wont work for google, to a limited extent perhaps but there is no way they can hand edit all the search terms that people search for, or even a large percent.
they won't hand edit the whole index. they will just write in specific algos on keyphrases like they already do. results in "real estate" are an example of filtered results. so are many in "weight loss". categories with high spam will be tweaked by quality consultants. and i think that is bordering on them failing their original mission statement.