trustrank

Definition

A method of passing down status of trust with links, from designated reputable / "trusted" websites: which are least likely to show/link to spam or other unwanted material. Its side effects include the so called "sandbox", which is tied to "link age", and keeps pages from being able to suddenly leap on top for competitive phrases ( at least without a massive amount of links from reputable sites ). The TrustRank patent was filed by Zoltan Gyongyi ( Stanford ), Hector Garcia-Molina ( Stanford ) Jan Pedersen ( YAHOO! Inc ) in 2004. Trademark for TrustRank was filed by Google. There's no comment on it from official sources, it has been in practice for years on both search engines.