CODEWITHSUNDEEP
algorithmpagerank
Jason Baker
Jason Baker

Reputation: 198697

How does the PageRank algorithm handle links?

We discussed Google's PageRank algorithm in my algorithms class. What we discussed was that the algorithm represents webpages as a graph and puts them in an adjacency matrix, then does some matrix tweaking.

The only thing is that in the algorithm we discussed, if I link to a webpage, that webpage is also considered to link back to me. This seems to make the matrix multiplication simpler. Is this still the way that PageRank works? If so, why doesn't everyone just link to slashdot.com, yahoo.com, and microsoft.com just to boost their page rankings?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 623

Answers (4)

patrick
patrick

Reputation: 16979

See the paper "The 25 Billion dollar eigenvector" http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~bryan/googleFinalVersionFixed.pdf

Upvotes: 1

user50049
user50049

Reputation:

Its a mystery beyond what we know about the beginnings of backrub and the paper that avi linked.

My favorite (personal) theory involves lots and lots of hamsters with wheel revolutions per minute heavily influencing the rank of any particular page. I don't know what they give the hamsters .. probably something much milder than LSD.

Upvotes: 1

Alex Reitbort
Alex Reitbort

Reputation: 13706

If you link to the web page, that web page gets it's pagerank number increased according to your site page rank.

It doesn't work the other way around. Links are not bidirectional. So if you link to slashdot, you won't get any increase in pagerank, if slashdot links to you, you will get increase in pagerank.

Upvotes: 1

Avi
Avi

Reputation: 20142

If you read the PageRank paper, you will see that links are not bi-directional, at least for the purposes of the PageRank algorithm. Indeed, it would make no sense if you could boost your page's PageRank by linking to a highly valued site.

Upvotes: 7

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