Hilltop Algorithm

What Is The Hilltop Algorithm?

The Hilltop algorithm is a search engine algorithm developed to find the most authoritative web pages and documents on any topic online.

It influences the rankings in the Google search results based on which authoritative (expert documents) link to pages most about a specific topic.

The sites with the most links from expert documents would ultimately rank first.

This is different from PageRank.

Hilltop focuses on authoritative links from expert sources. PageRank accounts for links from all sources online.

Google introduced the Hilltop algorithm in 2003. It was the first major step in using outside sources to measure quality.

Krishna Bharat and George A. Mihaila from the University of Toronto were the developers and founders of the original Hilltop algorithm.

How Does The Hilltop Algorithm Work?

The Hilltop algorithm works by first identifying “expert documents.”

These expert documents are essentially web pages that link to other pages on a specific topic – But aren’t directly affiliated with them.

The expert documents (pages) are considered highly authoritative, so a link from those documents is a good indicator of quality.

When someone searches in Google, the algorithm first checks if there are expert documents related to that query.

It then ranks the search results based on which pages have the most links from relevant expert documents.

By adding Hilltop to the Google Algorithm, it ensured that the search results were both relevant and high-quality.