TrustRank: What Google deems reliable

The more established a site or its links are, the more Google appears to assign “trust” and weighting in its algorithm, often known as TrustRank. Links from well-established sites like the Yahoo! directory, the Open Directory Project, .gov, .edu, and other sites established in the earliest days of the web carry greater source reliability and weighting in the ranking of your site.

You can find out the age of a web domain (and a whole host of other useful facts) by paying a visit to a decent Whois tool. On my forum I list a selection of the best, but for the purposes of this illustration, pay a visit to Domain Tools (http://whois.domaintools.com). Put in the URL you want to investigate like this:

http://whois.domaintools.com/yourdomain.com

The tool returns basic page information, indexed data (from the Open Directory Project and Wikipedia), and server data (including the country in which the IP is based). It also provides registrar data and the full Whois record (including the date on which the domain was first registered).