As complex as Google’s PageRank may be, search experts at Yahoo seem to think it’s not complex enough. Based on patent filings, Yahoo is dabbling in ranking algorithms that incorporate more user behavior data in advance of the company’s next run at toppling Google’s haloed relevance.

Seeing will be believing when it happens, of course, as Google is highly secretive about how its search engine calculates PageRank. If history is any indication, they’re already way ahead on behavioral factoring.

Nonetheless, Yahoo can afford the best search engineers in the business (if they can get them before Google does, anyway) and the patent filings shed some light on how PageRank is currently calculated and ways it might be improved in the future.

Bill Slawski, Director of Search Marketing at KeyRelevance, goes into painstaking detail of Yahoo’s user data challenges at his SEObytheSea blog. Patent language, especially when dealing with algorithms, can be confusing and dense, so we’ll just highlight a few interesting points and leave the lexicographical deciphering to you.

Some Yahoo assumptions about PageRank and flaws associated:

• Internal and external links are often weighed equally even though internal links can be less reliable and more self-promotional. Some links, like disclaimer links, are rarely followed.
• PageRank ignores that webpages are often purchased and repurposed, decay or become less valuable over time at variable rates.
• Current calculations, like TrustRank, are engineered more to combat webspam than to reflect actual user behavior.
• Sometimes PageRank deals with links in bulk, aggregating according host or domain, also known as blocked PageRank.

What Yahoo plans to do about it:

• Measure link weight – influenced by the frequency with which users follow a link
• Note when links are ignored and users leave (teleport) to another page of their choosing
• Calculate the probability that a user stops and reads a webpage rather than views it and moves on.
• Incorporate user data into the algorithm – “User Sensitive PageRank could reflect “the navigational behavior of the user population with regard to documents, pages, sites, and domains visited, and links selected.”
• Personalize PageRank based on demographic information – age, gender, income, user location)
• Emphasize recent information
• Weigh anchor text more heavily – the patent filing calls anchor text “one of the most useful features used in ranking retrieved Web search results”

An update to the Google Directory has webmasters puzzling over an apparent discrepancy in PageRank scores.

For months, the speculation surrounded an apparent decrease in PageRank scores on Google’s Toolbar. It seemed the decrease in rank was connected to penalties associated with buying and selling links that passed on PageRank, a practice Google not-so-quietly condemned last autumn.

But what was more confusing was that though the toolbar scores were dropping, the actual search rankings looked to be unaffected. Google appears to have updated its Directory on January 8 along with PageRank scores that are significantly higher than listed on the toolbar.

Observers say the Google Directory update seems to be pulled directly from DMOZ, the open directory project. As a result, Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable joins others in discrepancy reports:

…it seems like the Toolbar PageRank of this site is a PageRank of 4. But if you look at the most recent Google Directory update, this site appears to be a PageRank of 7

There are few theories posted about why this is occurring, Andy Beard explains how this could be problematic for advertisers looking to assess the true value of a website:

It seems Google used their real dataset for PageRank for the Google Directory export, forgetting that they are telling their millions of users lies on their toolbar with manual penalties, which until now had no visible proof.

Google have the right to do whatever they like with their search engine, but this is another major demonstration of how Google are manipulating public and advertiser opinion.

As I look back over the last decade, I can’t help but be amazed at the evolution of the online industry. Back in 1996, Very few people were shopping online, conducting research, or even checking their email in comparison to today’s standards. At the time, I was a budding web developer that had just started learning what it took to drive traffic to my own web sites while chatting on my spiffy AOL dial-up account.

Yeah, I was that cool back then too.

It was hard to sell web development services then as many of the small and mid-sized companies couldn’t understand why they would ever need to have a web site, let alone services like Internet marketing to drive traffic to that web site. Fast forward to 2008 and it amazes me that some figures estimate that we spend over 48% of our leisure time online – for most of us that’s over 125 minutes a day. I have also seen numbers bouncing around that the online ad spending for 2011 could hit between 40 and 50 billion dollars. Wow, times, they are a changin’.

When you factor in that a considerable amount of our time is spent on a search engine looking for things, it would seem logical that many companies would want to learn how to get their web sites ranked on the first page of sites like Google and Yahoo!. The companies that have learned how to do this are reaping the benefits at almost zero cost.

So, how do I get my web site ranked on the first page of search engines? Well my friend, this process is dubbed “SEO”, short for “search engine optimization”. Mastering this process could send your online sales through the roof and help put your brand in front of millions of people worldwide.

SEO, however, is not a onetime fix or magic bullet by itself. It is a process that starts before your web site is built and its tweaks are ongoing. It covers everything including; your domain name, the theme or topic of your web site, site architecture, and content. The SEO process gets further complicated when you add in the fact that there is no manual published from the search engines that guides you through the process.

Implementing SEO on your site basically boils down to two methods, off-page SEO (changes you make outside of your site) and on-page SEO (changes you make within your site). There are many different sides to this argument, but the most effective thing you can do to help build targeted traffic and higher rankings is off-page SEO. In a nutshell, off-page is focused on getting your web site linked on someone else’s site. This is called a “back link” and can be acquired in many different ways. The more back links you can get, the more your site appears popular to search engines. This popularity will help you rank higher and receive more traffic.

You should keep in mind that you want to get back links from sites that are related to the content of your site. This helps the search engines identify what you’re all about. When you start getting back links from related web sites, your site starts to look like an authority in its niche and it helps build a targeted profile of your site in the search engines. A good starting point would be to research your online competitors and find some of the places they have acquired back links.

On-page SEO requires a bit more work and involves a few more concepts, but it boils down to getting your site organized, so that search engines can understand your overall concept and how all of your pages are indexed. When you start to branch out from that main “theme” you need to incorporate new sections of your site related to that expansion. Each branch of your web site should be tightly focused on just that idea alone. And remember, it all comes down the quality of the written content within your site.

On-page SEO also looks at how your web site is structured. Having well-designed navigation will be needed so that the search engines can find your content easily. Make sure important sections of your site can be reached in several different ways and that every page of your site can be found without hassle. Having a sitemap is always a good idea too.

This may sound like a lot of work – and it is! However, the benefits you will gain far outshine any amount of time you put into it. Even though this is an entry level look at SEO, it will help you get the ball rolling on producing more and better targeted traffic to your web site from the search engines.

With Steve Jobs’ annual Macworld keynote only a few days away, Wall Street analysts, tech writers, and many of our readers have already made their predictions for what Apple’s chief will announce. Reuters sums up some of the consensus picks — a super-thin laptop, iTunes movie rentals, etc, and we’ll do the same on Monday.

In the meantime, here’s what we think you won’t see next week.

1) Blu-ray drives on Mac computers. When Apple updated its high-end Mac Pro line this week, they didn’t include Blu-ray drives in any of the models. These are the Macs that creative professionals who might actually need Blu-ray drives are likely to buy. So we think Apple won’t be adding Blu-ray to their Mac lineup next week.

2) iPhone Nanos. Apple’s six-month-old, $400 iPhone is still the phone to beat in the wireless business. Would Apple want to broaden its appeal even further with a smaller, cheaper phone — say, around $200? We have no doubt that Apple’s phone lineup will grow this year, including a faster, “3G” iPhone. But we don’t think you’ll hear about an iPhone nano on Tuesday.

3) A Mac tablet. We think an ultra-portable MacBook makes sense. Apple still hasn’t replaced the 12-inch PowerBook, and a thin, lightweight laptop with a real keyboard could sell well. The company’s multi-touch screen technology is compelling, but we’re not convinced that a touchscreen mobile device needs to be any bigger/more expensive than the iPhone/iPod touch.

4) Apple HDTVs. We’re big fans of using computer displays as bedroom TVs, whether through a video port and set-top box, or just playing digital movie files off a computer. And we think that’s as far as Apple needs to go with their LCD displays. There’s not much Steve Jobs could do to improve today’s HDTVs that would justify the Apple price premium. We think the company should — and will — focus on improving its Apple TV set-top box, which works with every TV, instead.

5) Jay-Z/Apple record label. This stupid rumor popped up last week, and makes absolutely no sense. Apple has no need for a label. It won’t happen.

Microsoft Corp. has reportedly bid $1.2 billion for a Norwegian search engine company called Fast Search & Transfer ASA. The $2.97 a share offer is a 42% premium over the company’s most recent average share price according to The Associated Press. The board of Fast Search overwhelmingly recommended that shareholders accept Microsoft’s offer.

The company was founded in 1997 and has about 500 employees. The firm specializes in high-end online search and business intelligence systems used by companies globally.

President of Microsoft Business Division Jeff Raikes said in a release that “Enterprise search is becoming an indispensible tool to businesses of all sizes, helping people find, use and share critical business information quickly. Until now organizations have been forced to choose between powerful, high-end search technologies or more mainstream, infrastructure solutions. The combination of Microsoft and FAST gives customers a new choice: a single vendor with solutions that span the full range of customer needs.”