Silicon Valley – PageRank and Search Engine Scrubbing
http://www.coderag.com/gavin-belsons-hooli-scrub-scandal/
Though fictional in nature, HBO’s hit comedy Silicon Valley is often lauded for its thorough research and true-to-form depiction of today’s tech industry, nailing details from technical procedures to valley fashion. When Gavin Belson, CEO of the fictional Google-inspired Hooli, starts getting flack for his poor decision making and failing pursuits, he attempts to clear his name by ordering Hooli engineers to manipulate the Hooli-Search results that appear when you look up his name.
The show describes the process of scrubbing search results based on the concept of PageRank, explaining how Hooli tracks the number of links directing to each website in order to determine the most relevant results, prioritizing those with the most links pointing to them. In order to force Belson’s undesirable articles to the bottom of the results, Hooli employees created a network of websites – content farms – that link to articles portraying the CEO in a more positive light. Since Hooli would give very little preference to these new sites without an in-links, the engineers then had to hide links to these content farms in places that would be generally overlooked, such as footers of Hooli-News and press releases. Though time-consuming, this method eventually brings these positive articles to the forefront of Hooli search results, effectively hiding those disparaging Belson’s reputation.
By accurately employing the basic concepts of PageRank, the show validates its authenticity, attracting not only lay viewers but also those well-versed in the technology upon which the show is based.