Virante Link Analysis Tool

Came across a very interesting article today by Russ Jones, the CEO of Virante.  The article illustrates a possible example of how Google could be analyzing your link profile.

The Wikipedia Model

The Tool

I think what is most interesting to me is his thought process and the simple algorithm  he applied to analyzing the link profile.  Things like

• "we determined how many OTHER links occurred within 300 characters before or after that Wikipedia link on the page."

A simple yet effective way to look at where a link is on the page and helps determine if its in the body content or in a linked side bar.

And a final point "If you are manipulating the link graph, it is pretty easy to see it. If Virante can see it, so can Google."  Google has lots of engineers hard at work at this and they are a lot smarter at analyzing a web page then we give them credit.