Why You (Used To) See So Many Spam Comments Everywhere
https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-pagerank/
Assigned a particularly obscure topic for a research paper, you’ve spent hours cursing at your monitor as you scour the internet for the slightest nudge in the right direction.
Frustrated, you nearly turn in for the night before suddenly spotting what appears to be the greatest piece of underlined, blue text you’ve ever seen. Jackpot.
Skimming through the article and satisfied with your findings, you keep scrolling and come across a comment section empty aside from a few comments–all by accounts rocking suspiciously similar usernames, all containing a sole link to a website. You think nothing of it.
The PageRank algorithm was developed in 1997 by Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and it quickly went on to form the backbone of their search engine’s frightening efficiency.
Citing the prevalence of “junk results” drowning out useful content in early search engines and inspired by the metrics scientists use to measure the importance of papers, the duo devised the algorithm to be able to similarly value and rank the importance of web pages based on the quantity and quality of inbound and outbound links.
This was revolutionary, and as the search engine grew in popularity, a Toolbar PageRank score was made available to the public and quickly attracted the attention of web developers and advertising (SEO) specialists alike. One of the biggest search engines in the world had provided them with a visual aid for a single metric: PageRank; and by that logic, it almost seemed like no other criteria mattered in shaping a page to shoot up the rankings.
This led to an explosion in the “high PR backlinks” industry, where individuals could buy and sell high-ranking PageRank links that would theoretically boost a buyer’s site ranking. Link spam was a popular method to do such–where users would comment their site link(s) under other blogs–and as a result, countless out-of-context links can be found strewn across the internet. Among other methods, this practice continues to this day as site owners scramble to game the rankings.
Google, not unaware of this, has taken measures over the years that both indirectly and directly combat (these) issues that serve to undermine the efficiency of their algorithm. In 2005, they partnered with other search engines to introduce the “nofollow” tag that would essentially ping search engine algorithms to leave tagged links out of ranking calculations; this dealt a heavy blow to blog link spammers. In 2016, Google officially removed the Toolbar PageRank as a way to prevent webmasters from incorrectly overrating the significance of the PageRank metric alone. But while no official statement addressed such, many believe its removal also served as another deterrent for link spammers who remained obsessed with the visual ranking provided by the toolbar and continued to engage in any means necessary to move themselves upward.
While we’ve been able to grasp the fundamentals of PageRank, contextualizing its use by examining how it’s fared when actually being used by users capable of finding ways to game the system is an important step in furthering algorithmic development by forging a deeper understanding of computer-human interactions.
We’ve discussed the structure of the web–the components, hubs, and authorities–and we’ve learned the foundations of one major algorithm–PageRank–that seeks to aid in the organization of all this information. But the way humans actually go about indirectly navigating these programmed structures should be just as carefully studied. Only by doing so can the true complexity behind the algorithms that shape the internet be revealed and the constant need to adjust them be understood.