PageRank™ is the heart of Google's software. This is a system for ranking web pages and it continues to provide the basis for all of Google's search tools.
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm which 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. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).
According to Google, 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. In essence, 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 PageRank 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" is the term). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page, there is no support for that page.
The Google Toolbar's PageRank feature displays a visited page's PageRank as a whole number between 0 and 10. Google has not disclosed the precise method for determining a Toolbar PageRank value. Google Software Engineer representatives have publicly indicated that the Toolbar PageRank is republished about once every three months, indicating that the Toolbar PageRank values are generally unreliable measurements of actual PageRank value for most periods of year.
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm which 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. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).
According to Google, 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. In essence, 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 PageRank 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" is the term). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page, there is no support for that page.
The Google Toolbar's PageRank feature displays a visited page's PageRank as a whole number between 0 and 10. Google has not disclosed the precise method for determining a Toolbar PageRank value. Google Software Engineer representatives have publicly indicated that the Toolbar PageRank is republished about once every three months, indicating that the Toolbar PageRank values are generally unreliable measurements of actual PageRank value for most periods of year.
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