Some internet search engines are designed to scan a webpage for keywords. They then use a mathematical formula that considers how often those keywords appear on the page and where they are located to help determine the page’s ranking.
Other internet search engines use a process that looks at how many times a webpage is linked to by other web pages when deciding how that page should rank. Using links to determine search engine ranking is called link analysis.
Keyword searches and link analysis are both part of a common internet search engine practice called search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is the art and science of making a website more attractive to search engines. The more appealing a website appears to a search engine, the higher it is likely to rank in search results, and in the world of internet searches, ranking is everything.
As 2006 entered its final weeks, Google was the internet search engine most internet users preferred. Approximately fifty percent of the time consumers turned to a search engine for their internet needs, they chose Google. Yahoo! was the second favorite.
Much of Google’s popularity is credited to its preferred form of search engine optimization, a trademarked program Google called PageRank. When PageRank was patented, the patent was assigned to Stanford University.
PageRank was designed by Larry Page, (the name is a play on his name) and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University, as part of a research project they were working on about internet search engines.
PageRank is based on the link analyses algorithm. PageRank is described as a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weight to each individual element of a hyperlink set of documents. Its purpose is to measure that element’s relative importance within the set. The numerical weight assigned to any element is called PageRank of E. PR(E) is the denotation used.
PageRank works in a way that is similar to a voting booth. Each time it finds a hyperlink to a webpage, PageRank counts that hyperlink as a vote supporting the webpage. The more pages that link to the page, the more votes of support the webpage receives. If PageRank comes across a website that has no links connecting it to another webpage, it is not awarded any votes at all.
Tests done with a model like PageRank have shown that the system is not infallible.
The HITS algorithm is an alternative to the PageRank algorithm.
Google’s powers that be take a dim view of spamdexing. In 2005 Google designed and activated a program called nofollow, which allows webmasters and bloggers to create links that PageRank would ignore. The same system was also used to help keep spamdexing to a minimum.
Google has designed PageRank to be an eight-unit measurement. Google displays the value PageRank places on each website directly beside each website it displays.
It has been proposed that a version of PageRank should be used to replace ISI impact factor so that the quality of a journal citation can be determined.
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