Domain Trust

If you want to rank high in the SERPs with your website, you must have authority and domain trust, in other words, credibility, as well as other factors. A website is considered trustworthy or assigned high domain trust by Google and other search engines only if it is filled with valuable, useful information, and is free of spam or unethical practices. Domain trust can also be increased through inbound links or domain age. Overall, there are many aspects which can affect domain trust.

Background

For a long time, Google PageRank was used as proof of high domain trust in SEO circles and on the web. Based on a classification system from 0 to 10, major government sites have been classified with a PR10, while new sites customarily usually start with a PR0. Webmasters could strengthen their PageRank by getting backlinks from sites with a high PageRank. In practice, however, it said very little about the domain trust of a website, because websites with low-quality content could still achieve a high Page Rank through link exchange. Domain trust should therefore not be confused with PageRank.

Domain trust itself can be described as the interplay of many factors which can prove the respectability and credibility of a website.

Inbound links

In contrast to pure link popularity, proximity to other credible websites is a crucial factor for domain trust. Backlinks must therefore come from trustworthy sources and there must be no connection to spam or untrusted sites that violate Google’s quality guidelines.

The basic assumption behind this is simple. Spammers link to spammers. Therefore, if many incoming links to a website come from untrusted sources, Google considers that website spam as well. High credibility and trust can be gained if the backlinks come from websites that already enjoy high credibility. Examples include nytimes.com, or Wikipedia; established big brands, or the official websites of trusted professional associations or political authorities.

Spam is not suspected on these websites, and a link from such a site can assist your own domain trust. If a trusted website was attached by spam, it would harm their ranking less than it no credible links at all were available.

Outgoing links

Following the same spam to spam theory, you cannot link to spam sites yourself so as not to lose credibility and trust. If it becomes necessary to mention an untrusted website address on your website, for example as a warning against spam, the nofollow link should always be used.

Registration information

Google has access to the registration data of websites and can include them with the ranking. Google can see how many and which domains belong to one and the same registration address. If a majority of the domains that are registered under the same address are not trusted, the domain trust will be reduced for the remaining domains and vice versa. This procedure is also the reason why newly registered domains that are still unknown and whose registration data have no connection to other credible domains, often have to take the tedious hurdles of the Google sandbox, whereas websites that are registered under the address of major brand names such as Nike do not have such barriers. The length of time that a website has been registered can also have impact on domain trust. The longer the website has been registered and configured, the more likely it is that this is a website with respectable intentions and therefore has a higher trust value.

User data

Search engines also evaluate the behavior of visitors to a website. Through Google programs such as the toolbar or Google Analytics, Google can recognize the user data on a website and include certain user-behavioral patterns in the ranking. User behavior on spam sites differs from the behavior on trusted websites. A very natural user activity will be given a higher domain trust. For this, the length of stay on the site and a low bounce rate are usually judged.

Quality of content

The quality of content on a website can be considered as a measure of their credibility. If unformatted text is published with many errors, these can be indications of a poorly maintained website and should not be granted high trust status. The same applies to copyrighted content that is used without reference to the source or copied texts that have already been published on another website. Even the veracity of content could play a role in the determination of domain trust. Therefore, data used on a website may be checked against trusted sources to determine the veracity of the content. Google is already researching this topic.

Data concerning the page operator

According to the German Telemedia Act, a commercial website must have a valid imprint. The person responsible for the website’s content must be named and a fast way of contact must exist. If the imprint is missing on a website, or it consists of false data, this can be an indication of a non-trusted site. One may assume that Google and other search engines have algorithms that can search the imprint for necessary trust signals. Because in principle, a commercial website with respectable intent should have nothing to hide. This also applies to the imprint in image form, as it has long been used by link exchange sites. The image itself is not readable by crawlers and can thus be included as a negative aspect in the evaluation of the domain trust. Moreover, it is possible that Google takes into account whether a site operator is registered in the public Whois database.

Mentions of the site on the web

A website or brand name being frequently mentioned on the web could be an indication of high popularity. In the eyes of a search engine and in the eyes of users, this may represent a sign of the trustworthiness of the relevant website. It can therefore be assumed that Google includes mentions of websites and brand names on the Internet in the trust evaluation. In this context, it may be useful to register the domain name as a trademark since it is often the brand name as well. After Google’s Vince update, strong brands are preferred in the ranking because they already enjoy high trust through their popularity.

References from social networks

Whether social signals are ranking-relevant is repeatedly discussed in the SEO scene. It is assumed that frequent mentions of a site and links from social networks can result in a higher domain trust.

Domain trust in practice

Domain trust is an important factor for webmasters and SEOs. It's not only important for your own website, but also for evaluating other sites. This analysis can be especially important if the link profile of a website is reviewed. If a lot of websites whose trust can be classified as low or that turn out to be spam pages in an analysis link to your site, you will have to take action. The inbound links should be canceled immediately through Google’s disavow tool and the webmaster should be asked to remove the link to prevent damage to your own domain trust.

To avoid damage to the credibility of your own website, you should do regular monitoring. Webmaster receives alerts through the Google Search Console if their website receives suspicious backlinks or may have been hacked.

Individual trust signals can also be an indicator to users if a site is trustworthy or not. Especially in online shopping, domain trust denotes an additional factor, namely security. Signals such as a secure https connection or reputable payment options, clear and transparent shopping cart process provides the necessary security. Independently determined user ratings may provide better feelings for the customer, but can also increase domain trust with Google.

Web Links

• Webmaster Guidelines
• Combating Web Spam with TrustRank; Stanford InfoLab
• Whiteboard Friday - Domain Trust and Authority