About the PageRank Calculator

[Description] | [The Tool] | [References] | [Other Related Sources]

Description

The PageRank Calculator is a script I wrote in response to a paper written by Chris Ridings entitled, "PageRank Explained". In this paper, Chris describes how PageRank - a multiplying factor which is assigned to all web pages when Google is deciding which documents are most relevant in response to a search - is passed from page to page depending on the link structure of a web site. For search engine optimisers, the principal benefit is to reveal how a webmaster can influence how Google views the relative importance of pages on his or her site by carefully modifying the site's link structure.

The PageRank Calculator is designed to model the behaviour of the PageRank algorithm used by the Google search engine as described by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the originators of Google, in their research paper, "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine." By entering the link structure of a small web site of anything up to 50 pages into the calculator, you can get a good idea of which of the pages on the site Google will be viewing as most important.

NB.The PageRank Calculator is not a crawler: it will not crawl your web site for you and calculate its PageRank. It is simply a model. You will need to enter in the details of your web site's link structure in order for it to produce its calculations.

Click here to try the PageRank Calculator.

References

The PageRank Algorithm - My own explanation of the mathematics of the Google PageRank algorithm, and how the PageRank Calculator can be applied to search engine optimisation.

PageRank Uncovered - Updated version of the research paper PageRank Explained by Chris Ridings which provoked me into creating the PageRank Calculator.

The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine - By Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the creators of the Google search engine, this is the original Stanford University research paper which describes the concept of PageRank.

Other Related Sources

The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web - By Page, Brin, Motwani and Winograd, this is a further technical explanation of PageRank by its creators.

Hilltop: A Search Engine based on Expert Documents - By Krishna Bharat and George A. Mihaila. Hilltop is a further refinement of the PageRank algorithm which uses small groups of related "expert" documents to calculate importance rather than the entire web.

The Intelligent Surfer: Probabilistic Combination of Link and Content Information in PageRank - By Matthew Richardson and Pedro Domingos. Another proposed refinement of the PageRank algorithm, this research paper uses a probabilistic model to improve the results of searches.

The Google Search Engine - And if you still don't know what all the fuss is about, click here to save yourself hours of frustration!