Google PageRank

Beat Signer
Global Information Systems Research Group
Department of Computer Science
ETH Zurich

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008

Overview
▪ History of PageRank
▪ PageRank algorithm
▪ Examples
▪ Implications for website development

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 2

History of PageRank
▪ Developed as part of an academic Larry Page Sergey Brin

project at Stanford University

▪ research platform to aid understanding of large-scale
web data and enable researches to easily experiment
with new search technologies
▪ Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked on the project
about a new kind of search engine (1995-1998) which
finally led to a functional prototype called Google

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 3

Web Search Until 1998
▪ Find all documents using a query term
▪ use information retrieval (IR) solutions
▪ ranking based on "on the page factors"
→ problem: poor quality of search results (order)
▪ Page and Brin proposed to compute the
absolute qualtity of a page (PageRank)
▪ based on the number and quality of pages
linking to a page (votes)

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 4

PageRank P1 P5 P7 P8
R1 R5 R7 R8

P2 P3 P4 P6
R2 R3 R4 R6

▪ A page has a high PageRank R if

▪ there are many pages linking to it
▪ or, if there are some pages with a high PageRank
linking to it
▪ Total score = IR score x PageRank
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 5
PageRank Algorithm
R ( Pj )
R ( Pi ) = 
Pj Bi Lj
P1 P2

1.5
1 1.5
1

▪ where
▪ Bi is the set of pages
that link to page Pi P3

▪ Lj is the number of 0.75

1
outgoing links for page Pj

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 6

Matrix Representation
▪ Let us define a hyperlink P1 P2
matrix H
1 L j if Pj  Bi
H ij = 
 0 otherwise
0 1 2 1 
and R = R(Pi )
P3
H = 1 0 0
→ R = HR 0 1 2 0

R is an eigenvector of H
with eigenvalue 1
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 7
Matrix Representation ...
▪ We can use the power method to find R
t +1
R = HR t

0 1 2 1 

For our example H = 1 0 0 
 
0 1 2 0

this results in R = 2 2 1 or 0.4 0.4 0.2

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 8

Dangling Pages
▪ Problem with pages P1 P2
C
that have no outbound
links (P2)

0 0 C

H=  and R = 0 0
1 0
0 1 2 0 1 2
C=  and S = H + C =  
0 1 2 1 1 2
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 9
Strongly Connected Pages (Graph)
1-d
▪ Add new transition P1 P2
probabilities between
all pages
▪ with probability d we follow
P4 P3
the hyperlink structure S
▪ with probability 1-d we
choose a random page
P5
1-d 1-d
G = (1 − d ) 1 + dS
1
R = GR
n
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 10
 G = (1 − d ) 1 + dS
1
Examples n

A2

0.37

A1 A3

0.26 0.37

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 11

 G = (1 − d ) 1 + dS
1
Examples ... n

A2 B2

0.185 0.185

A1 A3 B1 B3

0.13 0.185 0.13 0.185

P( A) = 0.5 P(B ) = 0.5

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 12

 G = (1 − d ) 1 + dS
1
Examples ... n

A2 B2

0.14 0.20

A1 A3 B1 B3

0.10 0.14 0.22 0.20

P( A) = 0.38 P(B ) = 0.62

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 13

 G = (1 − d ) 1 + dS
1
Examples ... n

A2 B2

0.23 0.095

A1 A3 B1 B3

0.3 0.18 0.10 0.095

P( A) = 0.71 P(B ) = 0.29

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 14

 G = (1 − d ) 1 + dS
1
Examples ... n

A2 B2

0.24 0.07

A1 A3 B1 B3

0.35 0.18 0.09 0.07

P( A) = 0.77 P(B ) = 0.23

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 15

 G = (1 − d ) 1 + dS
1
Examples ... n

A2 B2

0.17 0.06

A1 A3 B1 B3

0.33 0.175 0.08 0.06

A4 P(B ) = 0.14

P( A) = 0.86
0.125

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 16

Implications for Website Development
▪ First make sure that your page gets indexed
▪ "on the page factors"
▪ Think about your site's internal link structure
▪ create many internal links for important pages
▪ be "careful" about where to put outgoing links
▪ Increase the number of pages
▪ Ensure that webpages are addressed consistently
▪ http://www.vub.ac.be  http://www.vub.ac.be/index.php
▪ Make sure that you get links from good websites
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 17
Consistent Addressing of Webpages

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 18

Other Search Engine Optimisations (SEO)
▪ Internet marketing has become big business
▪ white hat and black hat optimisations
▪ Black hat optimisations
▪ link farms
▪ spamdexing in guestbooks etc.
<a rel="nofollow" href="…">…</a>
▪ selling/buying links
▪ …

▪ Is PageRank fair?
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 19
Conclusions
▪ PageRank algorithm
▪ absolute quality of a page based on incoming links
▪ random surfer model
▪ computed as eigenvector of Google matrix G
▪ Implications for website development and SEO
▪ PageRank is just one (important) factor

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 20

References
▪ The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order
to the Web, L. Page, S. Brin, R. Motwani and
T. Winograd, January 1998
▪ The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual
Web Search Engine, S. Brin and L. Page,
Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 30(1-7),
April 1998

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

References …
▪ PageRank Uncovered, C. Ridings and
M. Shishigin, September 2002
▪ PageRank Calculator,
http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank_
calculator.php

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, August 25, 2008 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch 22