PageRank Algorithm

PageRank is an algorithm that ranks web pages by estimating their relative importance from the structure of the hyperlinks pointing to them, originally built to order Google's search results. It treats each hyperlink as a vote of confidence and computes a page's rank recursively: a page gains rank when other pages with high rank link to it, and each linking page's vote is divided among all the pages it links to, so a page's influence depends on both the quantity and the quality of the pages endorsing it. Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed the algorithm at Stanford University in 1996 and published the first academic description of it in 1998, the same year they founded Google; the underlying patent was granted to Stanford in 2001 and has since expired, having earned the university about 336 million dollars when it sold the 1.8 million Google shares it took in a licensing settlement. PageRank was Google's original core ranking signal, though the company's search ranking system has since grown to weigh many additional factors alongside it.