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Hilltop is the patented algorithm provided for Google's use by its creators, Krishna Bharat and George A. Mihaila. It is an algorithm that finds so-called expert documents related to particular keyword topics.
Hilltop (current implementation is known by the phrase " Austin update") emphasizes the voting power of "authority" sites. These are websites (or pages) that Google assesses to be of strong importance on a particular keyword topic. They're often sites/pages that have high PageRank and a high link reputation for a particular set of keywords. Not having links from these authority sites has been suggested as the cause of the recent spate of poor rankings in Google.
Hilltop is supposed to act as an adjunct calculation that feeds the best topic-specific sites into the full Google algorithm equation. Some suggest that Hilltop is built right into PageRank, actually affecting the PR of sites in the Google index.
The revised PageRank calculation is suggested here:
{(1-d)+a (RS)} * {(1-e)+b (PR * fb)} * {(1-f)+c (LS)}
Hilltop would seem to reward a closed loop circuit among websites, all revolving around key “expert documents” much like the planets revolve around the sun. This web ring system would be a dead end, since new sites would never appear in the rankings unless they were “approved” by the ring leader. That would change Google's index from a democracy to an autocracy.
Although Hilltop may be a good solution to faltering Google index quality, it focuses attention on key websites, making them the future target of index manipulators. Will such a new algorithm dredge up all the really good sites that are currently down in the range of 30 to 100 and put them where users can get them? I've done some dredging myself in those dark regions and I didn't find many gold nuggets. If Hilltop is supposed to improve the index quality, it seems much-a-do about nothing.
From a general perspective, it would also encourage sinister-type collaboration among corporations to dominate the Google index. If corporations don't own the expert documents themselves already, they can simply purchase them.
So in some ways, Hilltop may be good medicine for Google while at the same time be poison for its future.
Expert documents are nothing new. Google has always had an authority site element in its overall ranking algorithm, but Hilltop may go even further to affect a site's PageRank. Would that explain the complete disappearance of so many websites in the rankings? Wouldn't those particular sites just fall a little? And why didn't their PR as indicated in the Google toolbar fall as well?
A few people observed that most of the sites affected had a PageRank lower than 5. Did Google only apply the penalties to sites with lower PageRank? Something's just not jiving here. It could be it's not a PageRank thing, but rather a link reputation factor.
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