Chapter 1 Levy Question 1 - The world according to Google - PageRank

[abartleKU]

1. Describe PageRank, why was it developed where did the name came from? Why it is important?

[Alauna Thornton]

On Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 6:31:40 PM UTC-6, abartleKU wrote:

1. Describe PageRank, why was it developed where did the name came from? Why it is important?

 PageRank was developed to so that Google could provide an assessment for valuing the importance of every web page.  Essentially PageRank is an algorithm, which analyzes sites that have been considered the best sources of information by other web sites.

The name came from one of the cofounders of Google Inc. Lawrence “Larry” Page (p53).  This computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur invented PageRank.

 

It is important because it will give you a meter reading of whether a new website is worth your time to view. According to the book In the Plex, Page Ranks is like looking at map of airline routes and finding out which ones are important.  Page sells the idea that it is a way for on to determine who links to you and determines whom you are linking to.

I tried to use PageRank and was unsuccessful in installing it on my chrome tool bar.  Then I found web resource that share why Page Rank is an irrelevant metric to track page rank.  It shared the following reasons

1.     Metrics are useless unless you can track them, and Page Rank can’t track them.

2.    Page rank is not relevant for real time search and social media results.

3.    Google says Page Rank is not important.  The company removed it from its Webmaster tools because they believe it is not important.

Retrieved from http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5535/Why-Google-Page-Rank-is-Now-Irrelevant.aspx

 

This site gave some reasons for why Page Rank may be useful http://blog.woorank.com/2013/04/what-is-a-pagerank-and-how-important-is-it-in-2013/

It shares that High PR matter if they are relevant and natural and guest bloggers usually prefer writing for sites with a high PR.  The Page Rank is important if you want to be considered an authority in the industry and not to just earn a high search ranking.

[abartleKU]

PageRank is a program that Google uses to rank sites, and was developed by Larry Page. The name is play off web page and Larry's name. PageRank is important to people who want their website to be discoverable. PageRank greatly improved the quality of search results that displayed on Internet search engines. I found this site that enables you to check the page rank for any website - http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php  here are some results I found:

• google.com (9)
  
• ljworld.com (6)
  
• cnn.com (9)
  
• ku.edu (7)
• edtech.ku.edu/new/courses/812/about.shtml  (this class website) (2) - I think it should be ranked higher based on its content! :) 
  

PageRank is not available on Google's own browser, Chrome, which is an indicator that Google does not think PageRank is important. While it's not as relevant today, some people continue to view it as important because it's been around a long time and it's easy to understand. 

[Mohammad aljaidyah]

On Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 6:31:40 PM UTC-6, abartleKU wrote:

1. Describe PageRank, why was it developed where did the name came from? Why it is important?

PageRank is a program that organizes websites to find the different ranks of websites. It was developed and became important because people now rely more on google to find suitable information to their questions.
The name is a play on words- Page is for his last name, and also it stands for the webpage. Rank stands for the ordering of websites/information.

[Christopher Simpson]

The reason that the 812 page is ranked so low is because nothing important links to it. Here is a short descirption of how Page Rank works:

"PageRank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. The underlying assumption is that more important websites are likely to receive more links from other websites.^[2]"

Since hardly any other pages link to the site, Google's algorithm does not see the page as important. As Alauna mentioned, a page becomes important when other important sites link to it. If you just got more popular and well known sites to link to the 812 page, its PageRank would improve.

[sandra vega carrero]

PageRank was developed because Larry Page was looking for a dissertation Topic while he was studying at Standford University. He wanted to create a system where people could make annotations and comments on websites, also where people could rate a websites. By doing that, they wouldn't just know if the page itself was well designed, but they would know what the world thought of that page. In addition, it is important because it allows you to compare the prominence between different pages on the web. As a consecuence, the search engine would understand what source is more reputable than the otheres.

On Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 6:31:40 PM UTC-6, abartleKU wrote:

[Peter Schaad]

Google began by creating web crawlers that would scour the web and list all of the webpages it found.  It bounced from one page to another using hyperlinks.  Page rank was an tool developed by Google to analyze a user supplied query and return to the user with the most relevant pages.  Page rank was important because its analysis was able to overlook websites that "tricked" other search engines into providing the user with spam.

On Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 6:31:40 PM UTC-6, abartleKU wrote: