I’m going to combine the next couple of items on my list of Google algorithm criteria into one post: privacy policy and terms of use. Why would Google (or any search engine) care about whether or not you’ve included a privacy policy or terms of use on your site?

I think it goes back to what I’ve said about some of the other criteria: trust. Google doesn’t “read” your privacy policy or terms of use, per say. But I do think the crawler checks to see if those things are present on a site.

Privacy policies and terms of use help increase the trust of your users. If users can’t trust you, why would a search engine recommend your site… especially when it’s pitted against a site that does have both?

- Matt