On August 22, 2006, Google’s latest patent was approved. This patent is extremely interesting in light of the recent excitement surrounding social search. The patent if broken down into its most simplistic form states, Google is going to take their existing algorithm and temper it with shared book marking sites and other trust networks.

The Patent itself is called, “System and method for supporting editorial opinion in the ranking of search results”. What does this all mean? If your web site has gained and lost significant ranking over the past month, it is very likely due to your inclusion or not in trust networks, such as links from http://www.myspace.com/, http://del.icio.us/, Google Co-op and others. Though the patent does not go into detail on which sites are trusted sites and which are not, it is likely that the trusted sites are the ones that are being talked about heavily with in the social networking arena.

In the coming days, I will decipher this complicated legal document into plain everyday English that we can all read and understand, so stay tuned.

The above entry was written by Michael Goldstein, Esq. the SEO manager of Rock Coast Media. Disclaimer: Attorney Goldstein is not a member of the United States Patent Bar, and his opinions should not be taken as legal advice in any shape, mean or manor, nor should his opinion be legally relied upon.

# posted by SEOmanager @ 12:03 PM