Filthy-Linking Rich Theory

The idea of the filthy linking rich theory is that sites which are popular find it easier to gain links than sites that do not. You can see where it gets it name as it parallels the fact that money generates money. Why does this happen? A model of search engine usage could explain the inequality. However there are things you can do to restore a balance.

The problem of links and popularity was studied by Cho. In this paper, he compared the popularity of sites using the convention PageRank model and a Search dominated model. The PageRank model is the typical random surfer that follows links in proportion to their PageRank, with a small probability that the surfer will teleport to a new URL.

The search dominant models assumes that the surfer uses the search engine all the time and follows links generated by the search engine. While this is somewhat unrealistic it is not an unreasonable as it modelling the effect of an extreme scenario. The results in the real world are likely to be toned-down somewhat, somewhere between the two extremes.

The basic outcome is that because search engines rank content according to popularity, sites at the top of the SERPs will receive traffic while new sites will take much longer to be discovered.  So it is possible that a site may have great content but will never achieve it potential while sites that have links will have their links reinforced by appearing at the top of the rankings.

The model does not take into account the long-tail search, which could return new sites in the index with a high-rank giving them the potential to become noticed. Lots of long-tail search could provide enough exposure to speed up a new good site’s discovery.

It has been observed by many SEO specialists, including myself, that pages on new websites will rank well in their early life but rapidly fall down the index. Could this be a mechanism by which new pages are given a chance to attract interest? I would be interested to hear about the experience of other SEOs on this matter.

With these ideas in mind, the way to increase your chances of being noticed are to add more content to pages in the hope that it satisfies more long-tail search queries.