I was thinking about how Google penalizes websites when they link out to other sites that have a poor reputation (what I think of as Google TrustRank), and according to SeoBook's Aaron Wall (in his TrustRank Algorithm Post)

• Good pages rarely link to bad ones. Bad pages often link to good ones in an attempt to improve hub scores.
• The care with which people add links to a page is often inversely proportional to the number of links on the page.
• Trust score is attenuated as it passes from site to site.

But that's still an abstract idea, not that hard to visualize, but still, not real.  This is more like it (see my photo, below):

This photo is more real - and explains what TrustRank really is - though I doubt Google would agree with me.

I was half thinking about having a sandwich at work, there's often food around - but when you put it next to a garbage can, the food becomes garbage, at least, in my mind, it does.

Besides my own mood and needs, it's the context that objects are in that make them attractive, or not.

I think, and this is where Google goes into error - that you can apply physical ideas like association and reputation (ie: one color next to another, changes both - simultaneous contrast) or hang out with criminals, you become one - to links coming from a website (especially if they're "paid links").

But what I think is wrong - that we're using links as a way of evaluating a site - I think that's wrong - but that's still a big part of Google's Pagerank algorithm.

Getting back to my photo, the food in the table didn't change - it's my conception of the food that changed - because it's next to a Garbage Can.

You may argue that people should not put food next to a garbage can if you want it to be eaten, or you should not link to offending sites if you want Google to rank your site - but that's all based on the idea of CONSUMPTION.

I think the reason why search results aren't that good anymore is the that links are used to determine much of the value of a site and it's reputation - when it no longer makes any sense to do so - it did, 10 years ago, but it doesn't, any longer and I think it's time for the Pagerank algo to be retired and replaced with something else.

Sure, I don't want to eat that sandwich - but I don't think Google should be my alter ego and decide, what is appealing and deserves to be shown, vs, what is not, based on it's own self serving idea of consumption.   I don't think we can evaluate the true value of anything just by what it is next to - what it links to - that's why the Search Results, in my opinion, are getting worse, not better.

I think Social Networks do offer a solution - and that appear to be the relationship of how information is used, not just what you link to, but how you interact - the whole Social Graph thing - that is much more meaningful than just looking at a bunch of links.

In fact, I'm reminded of ideas I've had about works in Museums, and how art is shown, or in fact, how a meal is prepared.  When you put a Van Gogh next to a Rembrandt, one of the paintings is going to suffer, probably the Rembrandt, it will look darker and older - and yet, if you put two similar paintings next to each other, they will probably enhance one another. Same thing with a meal - certain dishes don't work so well with each other - it's hard to appreciate everything when it's all mixed in on one plate.

And I think, it's the same thing with websites and search engines - that we need to look beyond what links to what - and more at what does one entity does with something else - not just what kind of links are on a page - but what do visitors do when they transverse that link.

But here's a problem - Google might have the technology to track all of this - but in order to do so, that data could easily invade our privacy, and it's a can of worms to track to track and evaluate sites based on behavior of visitors clicking on links - yet we have to move away from an "link economy" - a term that Jeff Jarvis likes to use a lot - to an action based economy - not what we link to, or who links to us, but we do with the information.