How does Google determine 'top refeferences'?

[nicole.healthline]

Does anyone have any insight into how Google determines 'top references' from medical websites?
For example, if you search 'skin disorders,' you'll see 'Sources include <cite>nih.gov</cite>, <cite>medicinenet.com</cite> and <cite>dmoz.org</cite>'--how is that determined?

[jesse-landry]

it's something to do with their Squared technology data extraction algorithms.. not exactly sure how or why but it only applies to broad matches.

Not sure it matters much as there aren't any links to the source sites and the links listed in references only go to google searches for those keywords.

I know this doesn't answer your question, but searching for information on "Google Squared" might get you closer.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Google uses their algorithm to figure out the relevance of the referring links along with the page and domain authority of the referring links.
So if you are a medical company and a school like John Hopkins references something to you or a top hospital links to you you will most likely see them them is the highest referring links as opposed to John's motorcar Expo if it was linked to you then it would not really be relevant to a site with the topic or the medical world having to do with medical issues.

I hope I have been of help to you,

Thomas

[BlueprintMarketing]

Here is some more information on how Google picks its top references it's really not a lot to go on unfortunately however the Google algorithm is so so complex that it will do things we could never predict sometimes

http://www.seowizz.net/2010/12/google-top-references-rolling-out.html

http://searchengineland.com/google-testing-top-references-refinements-in-search-results-59351

http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fcarc-pagerank

I hope this is been of more help,

Thomas