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For Google, it's not about how many people you know or how many people seem to like you. It's about, mostly, who points to you and says "there's a person worth visiting." Fortune Interactive's reverse engineering to decode how search algorithms work suggests that one weighty somebody is worth more than a multitude of nobodies.

The company released the results of a study that determined inbound link (IBL) quality, or the reputation of the referrer, was not only the most influential factor across all three leading search engines Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.

Though each engine weighted IBL quality differently, Fortune Interactive determined with its proprietary SEMLogic technology that what happens off the webpage is more important that what happens on the webpage. In fact, IBL reputation was more important than even IBL relevance.

The quantity of links was the least important among the organic ranking factors. For Google, it was title-tag keyword density that was the most important on page factor.

Fortune Interactive CEO Andy Beal and SEMLogic creator Mike Marshall have provided some nice bait to lure you in - these findings, while providing some valuable insight, only apply to the keyword [laptop]. That's not to say they're not true in others, but this is the only carrot offered by Beal and company.

An executive summary of the analysis can be found at the Fortune Interactive website, complete with tables, analysis of algorithm differences between the top three search engines, and an examination of "the coveted trifecta," where a website ranks well for a keyword in all three engines.

Here is the breakdown of the findings from the summary:

In-Bound Link (IBL) Quality . This is a measurement of key elements on the page containing an in-bound link which, in combination, influence the link reputation for the target of the link. This is the only factor that had the same level of relative influence across the search engines and happened to be the most influential in all cases.

In-Bound Link Relevance . This is a proprietary measurement of the topic/keyphrase relevancy of the content on the page containing the in-bound link. Yahoo and MSN place the same level of importance on this factor but not as much as Google.

* In-Bound Link Title Keyword Density . All three search engines differ on the level of importance placed on this factor. Google assigns more importance than the others, followed by MSN and then Yahoo.

* In-Bound Link Anchor Keyword Density . Google and Yahoo assign the same level of importance here. MSN places more importance here than the others, the second most important overall among its other factors.

In-Bound Link Quantity . Yahoo and MSN place equal importance on this factor, but still to a lesser degree than Google does. It is worth pointing out that not only is IBL Quality of most relative importance among off-page factors across the board, but IBL Quantity is of least relative importance among the off-page factors across the board.

Title Keyword Density . This is the most influential on-page factor for the competitive landscape in Google as well as in MSN. Yahoo assigns the same overall relative degree of importance to it as MSN.

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Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.