• Domain Registration: make sure all your information
  is valid, that your site, server, and dns server are
  not connected to other spam sites or many other sites
  you own. Register the domain for at least 3 years.
  Basically, you shouldn’t just register domains
  when you think about them – you should have
  a domain registration strategy to distribute how the
  domains are registered, where they’re hosted,
  which DNS to use, etc.

• Sandbox: “Newer sites scored lower because
  of number of back links. However, when inception dates
  are considered, scores of documents may be modified”.
  This implies that they are giving an advantage to
  older domains, as well as domains that are trusted
  or are authorities. They use the example of a new
  site with 10 back links and an old site with 100 back
  links; the rate of link growth is higher for the new
  site. This could indicate spam or popularity. However,
  if new domains contain “news” or seasonal
  information, according to the query, they can then
  rank quickly, even if they are new. Also, if they
  have a rapid increase of links, and these links are
  on authority sites, it may indicate that it’s
  an important site and may be worth giving points to
  so it ranks quickly, regardless of inception date.
  For some queries, older documents may be more favorable
  than new ones, so age can be considered and document’s
  score modified by a difference between documents’
  age and average age.

• Content Changes: they re looking at how often you
  add pages to your site, how often you update pages
  of your site, and the ratio for each. This allows
  them to determine if your site is fresh or stale,
  and allows them to compare this ratio to other sites
  in the same keyword sector. Thus, determine a content
  update ratio and stick to it – try not to establish
  hefty goals that you can’t fulfill, as your
  ratio and rankings may suffer.

• Your Page in the SERP’s: as they may be tracking
  click through ratios and time spent on site (between
  the time the visitor clicks on your link on the SERP’s
  and returns to check the next result). It may be time
  to employ a copywriter to make your keyword rich titles
  very attractive, so they attract people to click on
  your link. Once they’re on your site, make sure
  you offer valuable content so they stay. Also, don’t
  throw up pages as simple entry points without valuable
  content, as the user will just click back quickly
  to the SERP’s and negatively impact your site.

• Traffic & User Behavior: if you provide google
  with traffic information for your site through Google
  Analytics, try and make sure you are presenting favorable
  information. It is unknown how Google will work traffic
  data into the SERP’s, as they will have this
  info for some sites but not for others. It may bias
  the rankings for sites that give them traffic info,
  as there is more info available. However, if the info
  is negative, it may negatively affect that site. They
  may apply an “unknown” factor if they
  are unaware of traffic data for a site – but
  they’d have to work into the formula a way of
  handling sites that do and sites that don’t
  offer traffic data. By having access to logs they
  determine how valuable your site is according to how
  much traffic you receive from other engines and links,
  how long people stay on your site, what pages they
  visit the most, etc.

• Freshness vs. Staleness: In order to improve their
  relevancy, they are using lots of different types
  of information to determine if the query requires
  fresh or stale results, and if your site is fresh
  or stale. So try to determine if your keywords favor
  freshness or staleness, and make sure your content
  is updated at that rate.

• Behavior of links: this allows them to monitor
  many things: If links are added too quickly it may
  be spam or “burstiness”. If they are added
  slowly then the site may not be worth linking to.
  If the anchor text changes, the content may have changed,
  so the links may not need to pass pagerank. For each
  query they determine an average of link growth and
  if your site deviates too much its scoring will be
  adjusted accordingly. If you are trying to rank for
  keywords where staleness is preferable, it’s
  best that your link ratio should be slow. If your
  links appear on authority or trusted sites, and remain
  over time, with few changes, this may be favorable
  as it shows your site continues to be trusted. If
  the link text is too random or too synthetic, it may
  indicate manual intervention. Analyze anchor text
  for other authority sites and mimic their anchor text
  behavior. The amount of links from unrelated sites
  is monitored to determine if there are changes over
  time – you don’t want a rapid increase
  in non-related links as it can mean buying links or
  too many reciprocal links. Try to keep your link growth
  steady, not too fast, not to slow. Do whatever you
  can to encourage people not to take your links down
  – run a report every month to see who is linking
  to you, get their email address from their site, and
  email them if you see that your link drops to encourage
  them to put the link back on. If you want to switch
  links and anchor text (if you have control), keep
  a base of links that only keeps increasing, and rotate
  a small percentage. Where the link is placed is also
  important – if it is part of the body it is
  considered more valuable. If you are buying text links,
  make sure the links are included in the body and are
  not easily identified as paid or sponsored ads.

• User Generated Data: your site will gain points
  if many people bookmark it or refer to it in other
  ways. If it’s emailed to gmail users, if people
  add it to their bookmarks, or return to it often through
  the address bar, it’ll be considered a valuable
  site. This information can perhaps be used to modify
  trustrank.

• Ranking History: spikes in ranking may reflect
  active SEO and potential spam techniques. This could
  trigger a manual review or it could automatically
  adjust the score accordingly. A filter may be applied
  to prevent sites from ranking too quickly for too
  many keywords. How a site performs when it ranks is
  also taken into effect, by determining how often people
  click on the page and how long they stay. Ranking
  behavior of other sites is taken into account and
  compared. Thus, try to keep your SEO gradual –
  don’t apply too much at once, as it could result
  in drastic improvements and, later on, in penalties.
  Keep everything slow and steady, even your efforts
  at ranking.

1. Inception datea. Scoring based upon inception date (modified
   positively or negatively according to query)

1. For documents with many documents:
   •determining an age of each of the documents based on inception date
   • determining average of above
   • scoring based on the difference between ages and average age<
2. elapsed time measured from the inception date
   • when a search engine first discovers the document
   a. date document was registered can be used
   b. time stamp by server hosting the document
• when search engine first discovers link to the document
• when the document includes at least a predetermined number of pages

a. Frequency at which content changes over time
1. Average time between changes
2. Number of changes in a time period
3. Comparison of a rate of change in current time period with a rate of change in a previous time period
b. Amount by whichthe content changes over time
1. Frequency
2. Amount
• new pages associated with a document within a time period
• ratio of a number of new pages vs. total number of pages
• percentage of the content of the document that haschanged during time period
a. weighting different portions of the content differently based on perceived importance of portions
c. When document changes
1. Date when content last changed
2. Average date of change
• difference between when content last changed and averagedate of change