SES 2006: Importance Of Quality Scores

Both Google and Yahoo plan to place more emphasis on quality scores when ranking sites, and that topic quickly dominated the Search Algorithm Research session at SES 2006.

Jon Glick of Become.com brought up quality during his presentation time at the session. Quality scores as determined by the search engines will have more influence. "This is something that is being used increasingly," said Glick, who noted that it is a factor webmasters can control. Both Yahoo and Google have disclosed these will be more important, but there is no hard definition of a quality site. That caused concern for attendees, who expressed their worries during the question and answer session. Retailers fret that information sites will dominate the premium places at the top of the search engine results. (An escalating emphasis on quality pages that causes this to happen may increase the demand and competition for paid search ads, and it's hard to think that isn't a desirable consequence for Google and Yahoo. - David) The other speakers looked at the topic of discussion, search algorithms and associated topics. Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl Bookmark murdok: David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.