Google Patent Granted on PageRank Sculpting and Opinion Passing Links

Google filed for a patent in 2005 that could have transformed how we think about and use links, such as letting webmasters decide how much PageRank a link might pass along, or applying machine readable labels to links, indicating that some links might lead to “offensive” content (“offensive=very”) or “funny” information (“funny=somewhat”), or where on a page the destination of a link might appear, such as in a footer or main content area. This patent would also include a method to encrypt the content of some links, so that only certain people might be able to access the information that those links lead to. By SEO by the Sea