Google PageRank - Democracy or Corporate Muscle?

Google PageRank™ is what got Google where it is today.

Google has become the world's favorite search engine, and on average it probably brings Websites over 50% of their new visitors (when you take into account visitors from Yahoo Web page searches that are also provided by Google). For many Websites, mine included, Google brings nearer to 90% of all new traffic.

Recently, Google PageRank has attracted some controversy. Now that the dust has settled a little, this article attempts to take a more rational look at PageRank and its strengths and weaknesses, and to consider where Google could go from here.

What Is PageRank?

Google make big claims for PageRank. They explain the concept of PageRank as follows:

The original algorithm for calculating PageRank was published by the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, in the paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". Although Google may well have refined the algorithm since then, we know from this paper that the PageRank of a Web page is a number calculated using a recursive algorithm in which the page receives a share of the PageRank of each page that links to it. The share that page A receives from page B depends on the number of outgoing links on Page B (as the number of links increases, the value of each link decreases).

In other words, PageRank is a mathematical calculation that takes into account only the number of pages and the number of links on those pages in the whole Web of hyperlinks that lead to the page in question. Content is not taken into account when PageRank is calculated. Content is taken into account when you actually perform a search for specific search terms.

Who Benefits?

So how do Google make the leap from this relatively simple concept, to claiming that "Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank"? Well, as they say, they interpret a link from page A to page B as an indication of the importance and quality of page B. But of course, there are many other reasons why page A might link to page B:

• The owner of page A wants to promote page B because it is part of his own Website
• The owner of page A wants to promote page B because it is another Website that he owns
• The owner of page B pays for an ad on page A
• The owners exchange reciprocal links specifically to boost PageRank
• The owner of page A is an affiliate of page B and receives commission on sales
• Page A is a news story (good or bad) about page B's Website

In most of these cases, the importance or quality of page B has little to do with its link being placed on page A. Worse still, in many cases it is simply commercial interest that drives the number of links to page B.

The result is that PageRank favors business, and particularly big business. A business that sells a product or service on its Website will naturally receive PageRank because of affiliate links, advertising and resources devoted to Web promotion. A Website that offers information or free services will find it much more difficult to attract incoming links, and therefore, to achieve a good PageRank. It does seem that corporate muscle is useful when it comes to winning PageRank.

But That's Not All...

When you actually perform a search on Google, PageRank is only one of the factors that are taken into account in deciding which results are prese, and in what order. Google's own explanation continues as follows:

What this means is that it's a combination of content and PageRank that determines the sequence or the ranking of the search results that Google returns. The ranking of search results is very important, as most users won't bother to look beyond the first 20 results or so. It's important to the user, because if the search engine doesn't return the mostly relevant results in the first 20, the user gives up on the search -- and loses faith in that search engine. It's obviously important to a Website to be listed in the first 20 results for relevant search terms, otherwise that Website will receive very little traffic from the search engines.

For most searches, Google's ranking algorithm works very well for the user, and indeed I personally use Google for almost all my searches. Google usually returns relevant results, and often returns what I would consider to be the most important Website first. It is the PageRank factor that ensures that when you search for "Amazon", it's Amazon.com's home page that is returned first (although I'm not sure why anyone would need a search engine to find Amazon!).