Link Popularity
Link popularity is a measure of the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to a specific site on the Web. It is an example of the move by search engines towards off-the-page-criteria to determine quality content. In theory, off-the-page-criteria adds the aspect of impartiality to search engine rankings.
Link popularity plays an important role in the visibility of a web site among the top of the search results. Read about Search Engine Optimization.
The philosophy of link popularity is that important sites will attract many links. Content-poor sites will have difficulty attracting any links. Link popularity assumes that not all incoming links are equal, as an inbound link from a major directory carries more weight than an inbound link from an obscure personal home page. In other words, the quality of incoming links counts more than sheer numbers of them.
