Hilltop is one of the major concepts underpinning Google's search algorithm, yet its workings and implications are often misunderstood. After the infamous Florida Update, many webmasters were aghast as their rankings plummeted; and again, when the mysterious "sandbox" was implemented, some webmasters could not get a Web site to rank well, period. Part of the reason that some Web sites get shuffled out of the SERPs when new algorithmic features are implemented is that those sites never gained authority in the eyes of the search engines--that is, they were not sufficiently meshed into their local topical communities.