Link Popularity
by Jill Whalen
Updated in August 2004

For years, "link popularity" and "Google PageRank" have been the talk of the town in the search engine optimization community. However, the definition of link popularity and how it differs from PageRank (PR), as well as how much effect these actually have on search engine rankings, is often misunderstood.

What is Link Popularity?
The theory goes something like this: The search engine Powers That Be have decided that if other sites are linking to your site, it must be a winner; therefore, it deserves a boost in rankings (when all else is equal). If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. People link to good sites, not bad ones.


You CAN pay to have your links higher up, but by something suddenly becoming popular and getting more hits, the above happens as well. They don't check all the sites, but if they see one getting a ton of hits, it can move up as well. I just hate to see someone so apparently disgusting get "help" to sell their poor mutts=/