Apple gets a patent for…Google ! dotifi.com

Apple’s latest patent explains a system of scoring
websites based on links.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent
number 1,0872,088 (pdf) to Apple for “Domain based influence
scoring”.

The patent describes a system of scoring website domain names to
determine how important they are for search rankings. It sounds an
awful lot like Google PageRank and the search giant’s many
improvements for counting and scoring the influence of links
pointing to and from websites.

For example, the patent suggests that a domain name can “donate”
what is effectively link juice to other domain names. In one
embodiment, an outbound link from a domain name actually reduces
the importance of the site with the link rather than merely passing
on the link juice in an additive fashion.

It also suggests reducing the domain score of domains that link
to blacklisted sites.

One thing that might be a bit novel is considering individual
authors/accounts on social network domains as independent
entities.

But after reading the patent, the only thing I can think is…what
the heck is new here?

Apple filed a provisional patent application in January 2017,
and then the actual patent in November 2017. It was granted
today.