Google's PageRank Algorithm ... PageRank and its influence

PageRank is really important. It cannot be ignored. Its calculation, understanding and influence in a real web site is very complex making it possible to only generalize on how individual web pages effect others on the same or different web sites by virtue of the links in place. Despite this enough intuitive understanding has been developed to be able to guide web marketers.

PageRank is a registered trademark of Google. It is always referred to in its capitalized form in this book when the term relates to Googles intellectual property.

The word Page is definitely named after Lawrence or Larry Page the co-founder with Sergey Brin of Google, the search engine.

This chapter will pull out the important and practical implications of PageRank as I understand them. It will not in any major way try to explain PageRank by lengthy discussion. This has been done by the following authors in an admirable and eye-opening fashion. These following papers should all be read and re-read in your attempts to get a handle on this misunderstood and complex topic (complex in its calculation and its practical implications).

Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, Anatomy of a Search Engine. The presentation at the 7th international WWW98 conference

http://www7.scu.edu.au/programme/fullpapers/1921/com1921.htm

The paper below The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web. also by Brin and Page covers in more detail the mathematics and philosophy around PageRank and the whole WWW.

PageRank is essentially a system based upon citations of good quality content web pages. The more that a good quality web page is recognized the more will that web page be linked to naturally and for good logical reasons.

http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/1999-66

Chris Riding has written an excellent long document called PageRank Uncovered and is a sequel to the original PageRank Explained that goes into great detail in terms of the PageRank calculations and theoretical possibilities. Chris was the first to really study and make sense of PageRank for the benefit of SEOs. Most of the later contributors agree with Chriss views.

www.supportforums.org/PageRank.pdf

Phil Craven has also written a very good article offering more understanding and practical use of PageRank

http://webworkshop.net/pagerank.html

Marcus Sebeks articles (in which he actually points out a mix-up in Brin and Pages presentation to WWW98) can be found at

http://pr.efactory.de/

PageRank continued