I'm looking for tips on how to determine how well a given website is viewed by search engines, mostly google. Page rank is one indicator but certainly not only. Are there any search queries that can help figure out if a website has search engine authority/value?
there is no set criteria for this by google or any other search engines. just by common sense I would say some of these would count: age pr traffic backlinks
I am not sure how google calculates authority, but this link from seomoz may give you some insights as to how google calculates its rank, one of the factors being the deemed authority of the site. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-little-piece-of-the-google-algorithm-revealed
The most important factors that determine Authority are : * Age * Domain Extension Older the site, easier it is for it to get ranked and proportionately passes on link juice and authority to other sites it links. Domain extensions such as .Gov, .Edu and .Mil have a higher level of authority than any other tlds.