Is the Inbound Link Quality (ILQ) Tool — which calculates a rating for websites according to their number and type of inbound links — based on factors that Google uses?
Aviva Directory has posted a list of what they consider the Strongest Directories based off of the Page Strength tool over at SEOMoz.org.
On the same page the Aviva Directory writer notes that in their opinion SEO Company’s ILQ system of “measurement of directories based on .edu and .gov links falls short” due to “ILQ measures the number of inbound links a directory has from dir.yahoo.com, dmoz, .edu and .gov sites.”
They say the reason for their position is “What good is it to rank a directory based mainly on factors that a Google representative specifically states that Google doesn’t use?” Aviva Directory uses comments from a Matt Cutts video to support their position.
Matt Cutts from Google’s anti spam department released a Lightning Round 5 min video on August 1st 2006 where he discusses whether inbound links from DMOZ.ORG, .GOV, or .EDU are given a special ranking boost based on the domain name or top level domain name they come from. In dealing with a question whether blogs are ranked differently that regular sites Matt notes that “we don’t really have much in the way of saying oh this is a link from the ODP or from .gov or .edu so give that some sort of special boost.”
The context of that statement and the full question is as follows:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1756437348670651505
4:06 - 5:02
And Thomas writes in and says does Google index or rank blog sites differently than regular web sites. That’s a good question, not really. Some one else asked about links from gov’s and edu’s and whether links from two levels deep gov’s and edu’s, like gov.pl are worth the same as .gov, and the fact is that we don’t really have much in the way of saying oh this is a link from the ODP or from .gov or .edu so give that some sort of special boost. It’s just those sites tend to have higher Pagerank because more people link to them and reputable people link to them.
So, blog sites there’s not really any distinction unless you go off to blog search of course and then it is all constrained to blogs. So in theory we could rank them different but for the most part just the general search the way that it falls out ends up working okay. Alright thanks.
The question “What good is it to rank a directory based mainly on factors that a Google representative specifically states that Google doesn’t use?” is a good question and one that I would have been happy to answer if some one from Aviva Directory had contacted me. Before we deal with their question let me explain to those who are not familiar with ILQ how the rating system works.
The ILQ tools access Yahoo’s API and determines the number of yahoo.dir, dmoz.org, .edu and .gov inbound links a site has. It then calculates the ILQ value based on the preset values given to each of the 4 types of inbound links. Links from dir.yahoo are given 1 point each (a paid submission to dir.yahoo gets an average of 15 links), links from dmoz.org are given 30 points, links from .edu sites are given 45 points and links from .gov sites are given 67 points.
Here is a sample of the ILQ value for CNN.COM
http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/ilqtool.html?ilqtool=cnn.com
Here is a sample of the ILQ value for SEOMOZ.ORG
http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/ilqtool.html?ilqtool=seomoz.org
Back now to Aviva Directory’s question on why rank directory’s based on the above factors.
Matt Cutts gives us a hint to this very question in his Lightning Round video. After noting that Google doesn’t “really have much in the way of saying oh this is a link from the ODP or from .gov or .edu so give that some sort of special boost” he goes on to say that these type of sites tend to have “higher Pagerank because more people link to them and reputable people link to them.”
While Google may not give more ranking weight to a link from a ODP, .gov, or .edu inbound link based on the domain name (dmoz.org) or the domain extension (.gov or .edu) it is generally held that a link from a site that has many reputable sites linking to it is going to provide more ranking weight than a site that doesn’t have many reputable sites linking to it.
This is the main reason the ILQ ranking tool and SEO Company’s list of dirctories ranked by ILQ was produced. It is not so much that the domain DMOZ.ORG or the top level domains EDU and GOV have a special boost in and of themselves but that generally there are “more people link[ing] to them and [there are] reputable people linking to them”.
The different point values that were given to each of the different domains or top level domains were based on the difficulty to get links from these types of sites. These link values reflect the quality of the website that is going to be given these types of links.
Most sites can get accepted in Yahoo directory for $299 a year so Yahoo inbound links were only given 1 point (a paid sub gives you an average of 15 links or 15 points). While getting into DMOZ is not easy, for a site with quality originial content it is quite doable. So links from DMOZ were given 30 points, twice the value of a paid Yahoo submission. Edu links are more difficult to get and in most cases these links are given on quality of content. These links are given 45 points or 1.5 times the value of a DMOZ link. The gov links are very difficult to get and are given strictly on the value of your content. These links were given 67 points or 1.5 times the value of an edu link.
So to sum up, the ILQ system is based on number of inbound links from sites that are know to have reputable inbound links. The point system values given to the 4 different types of links is based on the difficulty of a website obtaining inbound links from these types of sites.
While ILQ is not a perfect system the method used is based on factors that are generally held that Google uses to rank sites. This factor is that Google recognized the value of inbound links from reputable sites.
