Google's PageRank (PR) is one of the factors that determines the order in which results are displayed after a search is carried out. If, for example, the word "Filipina" is Googled, a site's PR contributes to the position of the link to the site when the results are shown.
But how does PR work? The simplest explanation is that a link from page A to page B is interpreted as a vote by page A for page B (see "Our Search: Google Technology"). More links, more votes, higher PR. It is, of course, not that simple. If you'd like to see the original papers written by Google's founders, check out the following:
- "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page - If you've wondered about the origins of Google's AdSense, scroll down to Appendix A.
- "The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web" (pdf) Larry Page, Sergey Brin, R. Motwani, T. Winograd - Table 1 on page 10 shows the Top 15 PRs in July 1996!
- "PageRank" (Wikipedia)
- "Google's PageRank Explained and how to make the most of it" by Phil Craven
- "The Google Pagerank Algorithm and How It Works" by Ian Rogers
Category: Internet
