Miriam

The interesting tidbit in the patent was the “Highest Score of the documents” linking in addition to the number of linking documents. The implication was that a single hi scoring LP document + total # on the explicit link text was the calculation. We have yet to ascertain the relative weight of this vs other factors but it appears to account for about 30% of the variability in ranking.

@Miriam
I hope to write more thoroughly on the patent and our research but there are a number of equivalents:
Business Title= Page Title/Desc Tag
Category= Page Title/Desc Tag
Content of Business Listing + Web site content= on page content
Citations + Geo References + Reviews + In bound Links= In Bound Links
Etc etc

An interesting note in the patent was discussing a possible add on ranking factor of user logs. They would assess which business had their directions looked up more frequently and use that log information in the calculation.

I found no reference to age in the patent. Doesn’t mean they don’t use it.

Mike

The more competitive the market the more the local rankings are influenced by inbound links (quality, quantity, etc.). Of course they’ve added several nuances to the algorithm, including # or reviews, and geo factors.

I don’t see the big differences. I see it more as similarities. Basic “onpage” factors have to be right, then assuming you’ve done those correctly then “offpage” factors dominate.

Traditional SEO can basically be broken down into 4 main components, in my humble opinion:

Age of document
Inbound Links
Contents of Document
User Behavior

What are the correlations for these things in Local? Has anything occurred to you, in reading the patent? I would appreciate hearing any further insights you can provide, based on your review of the patent and our work on the project.

Miriam