Page Rank Plus

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns weight, or a value, to web pages. The algorithm is used in determining the authority and relevance of a webpage for search engine results. Basically the higher the Pagerank, the better the search engine rankings.

The name “PageRank” is a trademark of Google, and the PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,999 ). However, the patent is assigned to Stanford University and not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford University. The university received 1.8 million shares in Google in exchange for use of the patent; the shares were sold in 2005 for $336 million.

According to Google “PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages important”.

So having higher Pagerank websites linking to lower Pagerank websites will benefit the lower Pagerank website, but not necessarily detract from the higher Pagerank websites.

Selling Pagerank

Currently there is quite a bit of controversy regarding the selling of Pagerank.

Google has warned against such a practise of selling links to increase Page Rank.

In taking their stance, they clearly state that they will uphold the quality guidelines set forth in their webmaster guidelines. Any site caught selling links to increase Page Rank will be dealt with accordingly. To quote Google they say “we reserve the right to protect the quality of our index.”

Unfortunately there is very little means for Google to police this policy. Unless the websites selling Pagerank actually listed what webpages were involved in the illicit activity, Google would have no way of identifying the bad webpages from the good webpages.

Until Google finds a way to actually discriminate between good and bad links, there will be very little recourse for punishing the culprits.