24 Facts About PageRank

PageRank is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results.

PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages.

Currently, PageRank is not the only algorithm used by Google to order search results, but it is the first algorithm that was used by the company, and it is the best known.

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm and it assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set.

PageRank later used it when he founded Baidu in China in 2000.

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Name "PageRank" plays on the name of developer Larry Page, as well as of the concept of a web page.

PageRank was influenced by citation analysis, early developed by Eugene Garfield in the 1950s at the University of Pennsylvania, and by Hyper Search, developed by Massimo Marchiori at the University of Padua.

PageRank can be calculated for collections of documents of any size.

The PageRank computations require several passes, called "iterations", through the collection to adjust approximate PageRank values to more closely reflect the theoretical true value.

PageRank transferred from a given page to the targets of its outbound links upon the next iteration is divided equally among all outbound links.

PageRank theory holds that an imaginary surfer who is randomly clicking on links will eventually stop clicking.

PageRank values are the entries of the dominant right eigenvector of the modified adjacency matrix rescaled so that each column adds up to one.

Various strategies to manipulate PageRank have been employed in concerted efforts to improve search results rankings and monetize advertising links.

PageRank is Google's indication of its assessment of the reputation of a webpage: It is non-keyword specific.

Matteo Pasquinelli reckons the basis for the belief that PageRank has a social component lies in the idea of attention economy.

Mathematics of PageRank are entirely general and apply to any graph or network in any domain.

PageRank has been used to quantify the scientific impact of researchers.

Analysis of protein networks in biology PageRank is a useful tool.

Similar newer use of PageRank is to rank academic doctoral programs based on their records of placing their graduates in faculty positions.

Version of PageRank has recently been proposed as a replacement for the traditional Institute for Scientific Information impact factor, and implemented at Eigenfactor as well as at SCImago.

PageRank is presented as one of a number of these importance metrics, though there are others listed such as the number of inbound and outbound links for a URL, and the distance from the root directory on a site to the URL.

In sport the PageRank algorithm has been used to rank the performance of: teams in the National Football League in the USA; individual soccer players; and athletes in the Diamond League.

PageRank has been used to rank spaces or streets to predict how many people come to the individual spaces or streets.

In early 2005, Google implemented a new value, "nofollow", for the rel attribute of HTML link and anchor elements, so that website developers and bloggers can make links that Google will not consider for the purposes of PageRank—they are links that no longer constitute a "vote" in the PageRank system.