An Insight into the Phenomenon of Credential Scores and its Implications

One of the biggest challenges faced by search engines, and the question that haunts online marketers is how search engines rank a website, or the content shared on other websites like social media and other blogs.

Previously, marketers had assumptions about how Google ranks the content, and with the introduction of Google+, the process has become more complicated and more ambiguous.

The Google Patent Application:

The Google Patent Application was published in May of 2008; this application gives some hints about how Google might rank the content in search engine results. A few of the hints are:

• The content originally furnished on a particular web page
• Responses and forum posts also affect the ranking of the content
• Comments and blog posts are also a contributor to the ranking of content
• The content shared on social media networks, also affects the ranking of original content

This kind of patent filing is aimed at working with websites where people are not allowed to interact without any kind of identification (mostly, via secure and personalized log-in procedure). This type of interaction (be it via posting comments or sharing some other type of content) is then vouched for being weighed and credential scores for each user are allocated accordingly, relative to those interactions. The lines below further explain about that.

The System of Patent Application:

The patent filing system works on the sites that allow a user to create content, interact with each other, and share thoughts. But for the creation of the content the users are required to register or fill in some information forms.

Credential Scores:

The patent filing system can be measured, by weighing the level of interactions that take place between users. This weighing of interactions assigns credential scores to the users. The factors that are weighed in assigning credential scores are:

• The quality of the content shared
• The replies received for a post
• The answers given to a question
• The rating given to a video or an image

The Constituents of Credential Score:

The posts or comments, which one sees in response to a search query, appear based on their credential score. In other words, credential score is synonymous to author rank. The two key constituents of credential score are given below:

1. Authority Score:

The authority score will be based upon the quality of responses you make on social networking websites, and the contributiveness score held by the person who shared the content responded.

2. Contributiveness Score:

The contributiveness score consists of the quality of the content person shares, along with the authority score of the people who respond to the content shared by the person.

Applying Credential Score on Google+:

Social media marketing companies need to find out how will Google+ affect the credential score, and how can they analyze the credential score on Google+. Applying credential score on Google+ Circles:

• When a person shares some content, the contributiveness score of that person will be calculated on the basis of authority score of the people who responded to the post.
• When someone responds to a post in Google+ Circles, his/her authority score will be calculated on the quality of response the person provides, and the contributiveness score of the person who originally shared the content.

The Implications of Credential Score:

In terms of the appearance of content of user in search engine results, there can be three implications of the credential score:

• The users who have higher contribution score will be able to see their comments or posts in the search results.
• The users with high quality input can be rewarded
• Those users who have low credential score, may be restricted from appearing in search engine results, and depending on the quality of their content can be regarded as spammers.

Conclusion:

The crux of the matter is that, the level of interactions and the quality of interactions that take place among users on different networks, directly affects the appearance and ranking of content in search engine results. For any internet marketing agency trying to play ahead of their competitors, staying abreast with such critical information is the key to success.