Taking Advantage of PageRank Algorithms
This article speaks about search engines’ (namely, Google) use of PageRank and similar algorithms and how one running a websites may take advantage of such algorithms to improve their online visibility. For example, the author suggests that websites should reduce content overlap between web pages. This is because Google’s algorithm seems to omit pages or swap them with less relevant pages when there exists too much similarity between pages on a single site. The author also mentions that more specific homepages tend to attract more attention than do plain or generic ones. Simple changes like those above can, apparently, significantly improve the PageRank of one’s site due to how Google’s algorithm functions.
Among these tips, the author also notes that one can directly view their page’s PageRank on a 1-10 scale directly reported by Google. While their exact algorithm is secret and highly protected, the PageRanks it assigns are available in some fashion. Thus, it’s possible to see directly if certain changes increase PageRank. Of course, this is directly related to our work in class as Google’s PageRank algorithm is likely the most successful one to be implemented on a large scale. We can extrapolate internal references and linking between pages on a website in the context of networks analyzed in this course and try to gain some insight into how (on a low-level) Google’s algorithm may function and how we may attempt to take advantage of this to improve the visibility of a website of our own.