TITLE: Googles PageRank Algorithm

GROUP MEMBERS: Anshu Malhotra (MT10001) & Mohona Ghosh (MT10011)

ABSTRACT
Google describes PageRank [1]:
PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than
500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages
receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search
results.

PageRank is Googles Technology to innovate the way searches are conducted over the
Internet i.e. the over the Googles Search Engine which is the most popular search engine
today. Co-founded by Larry Page and named after him, it is a Googles technology to better
understand what the users want and give them back the best results for their search. The
software behind this search technology conducts a series of simultaneous calculations
requiring only a fraction of a second. On the other hand, most of the Traditional search
engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. Google Search uses more
than 200 signals, including their patented PageRank algorithm, to examine the entire link
structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. Then hypertext-matching
analysis is conducted to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being
conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, Google is able to
put the most relevant and reliable results first [1].
World Wide Web is the huge repository of information which has over millions of web pages
linked to each other. Searching for the desired information in this huge store is a task in itself
which Google has optimised to great levels. A ranking algorithm can help the user to select
the best resources from this sea of Web Resources [2].
As a part of Advanced Algorithms course project, we plan to study the PageRank Algorithm
which is primarily based on Link Analysis and Web Graphs. This will involve studying about
Incremental Algorithms to compute PageRank for an evolving Web Graphs and to analyse
the computation costs related to it. We will learn about the structural properties of a Web

Graphs which will help us study the behaviour of algorithms in a typical web search. We plan
to study the following research papers as a part of our Advanced Algorithms term paper &
presentation:1. The Web as a graph: measurement, models and methods, Jon M. Kleinberg, Ravi
Kumar, Prabhakar Raghavan, Sridhar Rajagopalan, Andrew S. Tomkins.
2. Incremental Page Rank Computation on Evolving Graphs, Prasanna Desikan, Nishith
Pathak, Jaideep Srivastava, Vipin Kumar

Reference Papers:
1. The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Sergey Brin and
Lawrence Page.
2. PageRank Uncovered, Written and theorised by Chris Ridings and Mike Shishigin,
Edited by Jill Whalen and Technical Editing by Yuri Baranov.
3. Dell Zhang and Yisheng Dong, An efficient algorithm to rank Web resources.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html
2. Dell Zhang and Yisheng Dong, An efficient algorithm to rank Web resources.