The Decline of PageRank
RIP Google PageRank score: A retrospective on how it ruined the web
Goggle, the worlds biggest and most famous search engine, needed to find a way to evaluate the importance of the pages it lists. Thus the concept of PageRank was applied. PageRank is a method used by google to determine the value of a given page. By analyzing a website by what links it references, as well as what links reference the site, the method gives websites a specific value. This way, the websites that are most referenced are the most valuable, and in turn the websites that this strong website references are valuable. Google can then place the most important and highly valued links at the top of their search. However, since its inception, sites have been trying to manipulate this system to get a higher score. A link selling economy emerged as a way for these websites to boost their ranking by paying companies who’s sole purpose was just that. Link spam began, where websites would reference as many links as possible to increase their ranking. A higher ranking means more visits to the site, so naturally many sites partook in these practice.
Eventually, Google caught on to this manipulation. They penalized the link selling companies and the websites that worked with them by lowering their score or in some cases even removing them from google. They edited their ranking system to try and prevent companies from dropping links. And lastly, google stopped making the PageRank score public, and they changed their overall ranking system so it doesn’t solely rely on PageRank. However, this just means websites needed to try a little bit harder to artificially boost their score, but it certainly didn’t stop them. As long as sites know how to get a higher rank, they will be trying their hardest to.