What is the Hilltop algo?
For the geeks who wish to go into great depths, there is detailed info available here –
Hilltop Paper & Hilltop Patent: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~georgem/hilltop/
For the rest of us, here is a simple explanation –
Bharat formulated that instead of using just the ‘PR value’ to find the ‘authoritative’ web pages, it would be more useful if the ‘value’ has topical relevance. As such, counting links from ‘topic relevant’ document to a web page would be more useful. He called these ‘topic relevant’ documents as ‘expert documents’ and links from these expert documents to the target documents evaluated their ‘authority score’.
The Hilltop algo calculates a ‘score of authority’ of web pages (over-simplified) as follows:
Run a normal search on the keyphrase to locate a ‘corpus’ of expert documents. The qualifying rules of ‘expert documents’ are stringent so the ‘corpus’ is a manageable number of web pages. Filter affiliate* sites and duplicate sites from the experts list.
Pages are assigned a LocalScore of ‘authority’ based on number and quality of votes they get from these expert documents. Pages are then ranked based on their LocalScore.
*Affiliate sites are pages that originate from the same domain, same domain with different suffix (ibm.com, ibm.co.uk, ibm.co.jp etc.) or from neighborhood IPs (first 3 common octet in the IP number like 64.129.220.xxx)
The combination of Hilltop algo, Google-PR and on-page relevance factors seems to be a highly potent combination, very difficult to beat. Not impossible but very difficult. This new combination has far-reaching implications on how link-popularity and PageRank would affect your site ranking. While there are several upsides to this new system, there are also several flaws in this new system. I will be addressing these analytics in a different exclusive article.
With the major algo updates in Google, one thing is clear. There is no easy way to get to the top. Sites that deployed simple techniques of Meta optimization or even on-page optimization will find it difficult to rank. There are close to 100 algo variables that need to be evaluated and addressed; not just Meta tags. SEO is now going to be highly specialized. The old tricks are out, or have become ineffective. Comprehensive SEO strategies will need to be planned and implemented. SEO experts will now require putting in greater intellect, talent, research, analysis, planning and man-hours to get good results. SEO costs will therefore escalate.
PPC costs will rise. PPC campaigns will need to form an integral part of your online marketing strategy and will need to be balanced with the organic search engine traffic. Link-building and PR now carries a greater significance. It has a greater impact on ranking and therefore cannot be ignored or viewed in isolation. Isn’t Link Building an integral part of SEO ? will need to be combined to formulate the overall strategy as its combined impact has greater synergy. Algo updates will now be more frequent and more intense. Monthly maintenance of SEO is now extremely important. Long-term partnerships with SEO providers are a must and will be productive.
Several 1000 high-profile sites have lost ranks. SEO providers are now in greater demand. Several 1000 SEO experts now cannot deal with the new algo. They are fumbling for answers. Fly-by-night SEO providers will fly-by-night. The ‘real’ SEO providers list has just shrunk. SEO and ranking business has just become more serious, more difficult and more important.
As always, I welcome your comments, suggestions and questions.
