Google’s Page Rank
Last year, Google no longer kept the page rank score of a website accessible to the public. But according to this article, page rank may have ruined the web.
Initially, page rank was revealed in 2000 with Google’s implementation of their toolbar in IE and Firefox. It had a page rank meter that indicated the score of the website, ranging from 0-10. Although many users didn’t pay attention to this, those involved in search engine optimization found it extremely useful. Being able to see In the mid 2000s, users did everything they could to boost their page rank score by spamming links in blog posts and other media outlets. This became a huge problem and Google ended up reducing the page rank of websites that were spammed to keep in check the natural order of things.
Eventually, page rank viewing was dropped from browsers and Google’s toolbar itself. Now, those looking to optimize their page rank score have to depend on third party applications, which may not be accurate since it depends on other factors besides number of links pointing to that specific website. Dropping page rank scores reduces the pressure about maintaining a high number of links and allows a more natural natural order to occur.
This relates to what we have learned in class because it shows how to increase power for any network, which can be applied to social networks as well. Those in a social network could abuse this system of page rank by dropping their links anywhere and everywhere to increase their relevance.
RIP Google PageRank score: A retrospective on how it ruined the web