Google’s PageRank in 2018
https://www.link-assistant.com/news/page-rank-2018.html
The article talks about Page Rank which is a google algorithm that helps to determine the page rank of a web page. The first quarter of the article explains how this algorithm works on a really basic level. The next quarter of the article talks about how useful it is in determining what links should come up first in a search engine. Many different search engines other than google have been trying to optimize their own page ranking algorithms to be as efficient as google’s. The next part of the article talks about how people can easily manipulate the algorithm to benefit themselves.
For example, people can build link farms and link selling in order to increase the page rank of websites that were willing to pay for extra publicity. Google has been trying to shut down these sites that sell links, but as soon as a network closes, another one opens it. Such is so for black markets. Another abuse of the system came with link spamming in which links are just posted at random places in the internet. This can be seen all over Facebook. Now a no follow tag helps to combat this, but it still exists. Even though google’s algorithm is now kept a secret, as long as people know that google bases their ranking algorithm on links, link farming, selling and spam will always be an issue.
This resource directly relates to the page ranking algorithm that we have been discussing in class. We talked about how the more links that point to a website increases its rank. In addition, we talked about how the power of one web page is transferred to another through links. The power is divided equally between the links on the original web page. This is similar to the algorithm that google uses to understand how to rank a web page. However, in class we did not discuss a lot about how this algorithm can be abused so that sites will have a higher page rank than they really should.