Why Google PageRank is used in 2018
Link: https://www.link-assistant.com/news/page-rank-2018.html
This is an interesting article in my opinion. Although it discusses PageRank in a manner that is similar to the textbook and in class, having another person explain it to me helped me in understanding the topic and its importance. This article goes into how important PageRank is with Google, even in today’s modern society. Currently, Google is the top used web search engine in the world; whenever someone wants to look up something, they google it. However, with the advancement in technology and information profoundly progressing each day, Google has to make sure to keep its queries update and ensure their users receive the right material that they are looking for. PageRank helps Google provide the most trusted and reliable information possible to a user when they are searching up a topic. Nowadays, it is very easy for someone to post false or misleading information online that can trick people or even get them into trouble. PageRank helps mitigate that by using the values that certain webpages and contents hold by the amount of links that are connected to it; the more links means the more likely the source is reputable. Google will use this information to give the best resources to users from sites that a lot of links lead to.
However, what surprised me was that PageRank also has some issues. This article opened my eyes to the controversies that PageRank was involved in. For example, Google has a toolbar that allowed users to look at the PageRank of different websites on a scale of 1-10. Overtime, SEOs (Search Engine Optimizers) put the Toolbar on a pedestal as they became overly obsessed in seeing how the content on their search engines rank, causing a lot of unnecessary tension. In addition, link farms occurred due to the use of PageRank. SEOs and other rank-obsessed users began making link farms where they will sell links in hopes of improving their ranks. For example, SearchKing participated in this sort of action, and was removed from Google searches as a consequence after Google found out about it. Link spam is another issue, where spam content would spread through spammy comments with links across the Web and search engines.
Overall, this article about PageRank was interesting and it did help change my initial perspective on learning about the topic.