Page rank & it’s relative importance
Page Rank was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page (hence the name Page-Rank and later Sergey Brin as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine. The project started in 1995 and led to a functional prototype, named Google, in 1998. Shortly after, Page and Brin founded Google Inc., the company behind the Google search engine. The name Page Rank is a trademark of Google.
The Page Rank process has been patented. The patent is not assigned to Google but to Stanford. Page Rank is a link analysis algorithm that 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.
Inspite of its contentious yet essential presence for so many years, there is currently a debate going on about Google removing the PageRank score from the Google Toolbar. The reasons cited are:
- Toolbar PageRank numbers can be 3 months out of date or more.
- Some “PR Updates” have been buggy enough to seriously misrepresent a page’s real PR.
- Matt Cutts has blogged that PR Updates are considered pretty much a non-event around Google.
- PageRank has started a flawed economy of link building and trading in an effort to raise or distribute these scores.
It seems that Google is keeping an eye on this one and taking it seriously. Search Engine Roundtable notes that Adam Lasnk of Google has joined the discussion and is looking for feedback and alternative information which Google could serve.
PageRank is an important indicator and remains one of many efficient measures of quality, but it’s often viewed and used in ways that run contrary to the interests of searchers and webmasters. Nevertheless a lot of people find the PR information useful. Perhaps Google should release a toolbar only for Google Webmaster Tools users, or should the company leave such tweaking up to Greasemonkey? You be the judge!