If you ran the Search Engines.

Ok, from an end users point of view, if you ran the major search engines what critera would you set for websites to rank highly?
My opinion is that when searching on say Google the websites that appear highest are not nesessarily the best ones, more so the ones who have spent time and money to gain that position and not always for the benefit of the visitor, more for the site owners benefit.
So how can this be done so the highest rankings are the sites that are truly the best for the end users?

Your opinion??


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Maybe the ones that ave the most return visitors. If people return then its obvious that the site has useful info to cause this.

Hmmm. I'm not convinced! Often I simply want to search for a peice of info once (or buy something) and then never return to that site ever again, even if it was the perfect solution to my problem. It might work to some degree with forums, which would seem to suit this model, but even then I'm not sure..

One obvious solution would be some sort of user feedback (e.g. how useful was this site at providing what you searched for?)... but the problem would be how to stop people like us manipulating the system! :cooler:

Also, whatever the system, how do we get new sites off the ground?

I know this isnt site criteria related,but what if google had a forum??? It would be massive!

Thats a tough question to answer, but should make an interesting topic to discuss in the forums. There are so many factors that need to be taken into consideration such as traffic amounts, click though rate, link popularity, age and reputation of site.............and so much more