PageRank

PageRank is a family of algorithms for assigning numerical weightings to hyperlinked documents (or web pages) indexed by a search engine . Its properties are much discussed by search engine optimization (SEO) experts. The PageRank system is used by the popular search engine Google to help determine a page's relevance or importance. It was developed by Google 's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin while at Stanford University in 1998 . As Google puts it (http://www.google.com/technology/):

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

In other words, a page rank results from a "ballot" among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it (" incoming links "). A page that is linked by many pages with high rank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support of this specific page. The Google Toolbar PageRank goes from 0 to 10. It seems to be a logarithmic scale. The exact details of this scale are unknown.

The name PageRank is a trademark of Google. Whether or not the pun on the name Larry Page and the word "page" was intentional or accidental remains an open question. The PageRank process has been patented ( U.S. Patent 6,285,999 (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser? Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,285,999.WKU.&OS=PN/6,285,999&RS=PN/6,285,999)).

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

Reprinted from Wikipedia, The Free-Content Encyclopedia under the GNU Free Documentation License.

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March 11 2010 09:54 UTC