WebProNews » PageRank http://www.webpronews.com Breaking News in Tech, Search, Social, & Business Wed, 22 May 2013 05:38:59 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Google PageRank-Inspired Cancer Research Published http://www.webpronews.com/google-pagerank-inspired-cancer-research-published-2013-03 http://www.webpronews.com/google-pagerank-inspired-cancer-research-published-2013-03#comments Tue, 26 Mar 2013 21:03:48 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=222526 Google’s PageRank algorithm is the inspiration for a new lung cancer study published in the journal Cancer Research.

Researchers fron the University of Southern California (USC), Scripps Clinic, The Scripps Research Institute, University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York used an algorithm described as “similar to the Google PageRank and to the Viterbi Algorithm for digital communication” to gain insights about spread patterns of lung cancer.

“This research demonstrates how similar the Internet is to a living organism,” said USC Viterbi School of Engineering Professor Paul Newton, Ph.D., the lead and corresponding author of the study. “The same types of tools that help us understand the spread of information through the web can help us understand the spread of cancer through the human body.”

In fact, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen PageRank used to study other areas of science or even cancer. A Washington State University chemistry professor claimed to have adapted the PageRank algorithm to help determine molecular shapes and chemical reactions. Then, a study came out last year looking at improving outcome prediction for cancer patients by network-based ranking of marker genes, using the PageRank concept.

We first reported on this new study in December, but now the results are out.

The team learned that metastatic lung cancer doesn’t progress in a single direction from the primary tumor site to distant locations, according to a news release on the findings. They also say they learned that the first site to which the cells spread plays a key role in the progression of the disease, with the study showing that some parts of the body serve as “sponges” that are unlikely to further spread the cancer cells to other areas of the body. The study did identify other areas as spreaders for lung cancer cells, with the main spreaders being the adrenal gland and kidney, and the main sponges being the regional lymph nodes, liver and bone.

More on the study here.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/google-pagerank-inspired-cancer-research-published-2013-03/feed 0 Wondering What Percentage Of PageRank Disappears Through 301 Redirects? http://www.webpronews.com/wondering-what-percentage-of-pagerank-disappears-through-301-redirects-2013-02 http://www.webpronews.com/wondering-what-percentage-of-pagerank-disappears-through-301-redirects-2013-02#comments Mon, 25 Feb 2013 17:19:07 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=218533 Google’s Matt Cutts discusses loss of PageRank from 301 redirects in the latest Webmaster Help video. Specifically, he answers the following user-submitted question:

Roughly what percentage of PageRank is lost through a 301 redirect?

After providing some history about the context of this question, Cutts says, “I sent an email to the team who is in charge of this, and of course the implementation of this can very over time, but this has been roughly the same for quite a while. The amount of PageRank that dissipates through a 301 is currently identical to the amount of PageRank that dissipates through a link. So they are utterly the same in terms of the amount of PageRank that dissipates going through a 301 versus through a link. So that doesn’t mean use a 301. It doesn’t mean use a link. It means use whatever is best for your purposes because you don’t get to hoard or conserve any more PageRank if you use a 301, and likewise it doesn’t hurt you if you use a 301.”

He is careful to point out that this could change in the future.

“That’s the current implementation,” he says. “We don’t promise it will be that way for all time and eternity, but I don’t see any reason why in particular it would change.”

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/wondering-what-percentage-of-pagerank-disappears-through-301-redirects-2013-02/feed 5 Here’s Why Google Doesn’t Turn Off Toolbar PageRank http://www.webpronews.com/heres-why-google-doesnt-turn-off-toolbar-pagerank-2013-02 http://www.webpronews.com/heres-why-google-doesnt-turn-off-toolbar-pagerank-2013-02#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:53:15 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=215396 Now that Google’s Matt Cutts is back online, he’s been steadily putting out new Webmaster Help videos on a daily basis. It will be interesting to see how long this continues.

Today’s is particularly timely considering Google just pushed out a toolbar PageRank update (the first of the year).

Cutts responds to the following user-submitted question:

Why don’t you switch off the PageRank Toolbar feature? It is widely used by link sellers as a link grading system. Why do you continue to display PageRank publicly? It appears to have little relevance, except to spammers.

“My rough answer is: there are a lot of SEOs and people in search who look at the PageRank toolbar, but there are a ton of regular users as well,” says Cutts. “You would be really surprised at how many just regular people have the Google Toolbar, and user PageRank as a way to figure out…how reputable at something…I know it seems kind of strange, but it also seems strange that nofollow is only a single digit percentage of links on the web. We get into our tunnel vision, and we sort of say, ‘Oh, well no one else uses the PageRank toolbar,’ but the fact is a lot of people do.”

He continues, “Now, one interesting twist is Chrome doesn’t really have a PageRank toolbar feature built in, and Internet Explorer 10, as I understand it, doesn’t allow toolbars or add-ins, or as Microsoft calls it, it provides an ‘add-in free experience,’ so if IE 10 becomes more popular, eventually it might be the case that the Google Toolbar is not as commonly used, and in that case, it might be the case that, it might be such that over time, maybe the PageRank feature is not used by as many people, and so maybe it will go away on its own or eventually we’ll reach the point where we say, ‘Okay, maintaining this is not worth the amount of work.’”

He says Google will probably continue to support the feature as long as people are using it. With IE 10, however, he says, “the writing is on the wall,” so they’ll see how that affects things in the future (particularly for Windows users).

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/heres-why-google-doesnt-turn-off-toolbar-pagerank-2013-02/feed 4 Google Releases Toolbar PageRank Update http://www.webpronews.com/google-releases-toolbar-pagerank-update-2013-02 http://www.webpronews.com/google-releases-toolbar-pagerank-update-2013-02#comments Tue, 05 Feb 2013 17:03:44 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=215070 Google updates toolbar PageRank about four times a year. They updated it in November, and August before that. Now they’ve updated it again – the first update of 2013.

People started noticing the update on Monday. As usual, webmasters are taking to Twitter to express their comments on the ups and downs.

It’s become pretty well known in the industry that toolbar PageRank is not the most helpful indication of how Google views a page, though actual PageRank is certainly still an important signal (Matt Cutts even referenced it in the latest Webmaster Help video).

As usual, here’s the obligatory Matt Cutts video discussing toolbar PageRank:

[via Search Engine Roundtable]

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/google-releases-toolbar-pagerank-update-2013-02/feed 2 Google Algorithm Used For Cancer Research…Again http://www.webpronews.com/google-algorithm-used-for-cancer-research-again-2012-12 http://www.webpronews.com/google-algorithm-used-for-cancer-research-again-2012-12#comments Mon, 10 Dec 2012 20:06:44 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=206532 ]]> Earlier this year, we looked at a story about a Washington State University chemistry professor who claimed to have adapted Google’s PageRank algorithm to help determine molecular shapes and chemical reactions.

We also interviewed her here.

Then, we showed you a study that looked at improving outcome prediction for cancer patients by network-based ranking of marker genes, using Google’s PageRank concept.

Now, the part of Google’s algorithm that’s used to predict the pages users visit is being utilized by a mathematician named Paul Newton from USC to track the spread of cancer cells throughout the body. LiveScience reports:

Google ranks Web pages by the likelihood that an individual would end up visiting each one randomly. These predictions are based on the trends of millions of users across the Web. Google uses something called the “steady state distribution” to calculate the probability of someone visiting a page.

“You have millions of people wandering the Web, [and] Google would like to know what proportion are visiting any given Web page at a given time,” Newton explained.

“It occurred to me that steady state distribution is equivalent to the metastatic tumor distribution that shows up in the autopsy datasets.”

Google’s Matt Cutts shared the news on Twitter:

If only there were a Penguin or Panda-type update that could simply eliminate cancerous cells.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/google-algorithm-used-for-cancer-research-again-2012-12/feed 0 Google Pushes New Toolbar PageRank Update http://www.webpronews.com/google-pushes-new-toolbar-pagerank-update-2012-11 http://www.webpronews.com/google-pushes-new-toolbar-pagerank-update-2012-11#comments Thu, 08 Nov 2012 16:38:17 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=201696 Google updates toolbar PageRank about four times a year. They updated it in August, and now they’ve updated it again. As you would expect, some sites are going up, and some are going down, but in both cases, webmasters are noticing.

As usual, people are taking to Twitter to voice their “excitement”.

This toolbar mythbusting article from 2010 by SEOBullshit has gotten a couple of tweets. Search Engine Roundtable points to some forum threads where the update is being discussed.

Toolbar PageRank doesn’t mean a lot, but people still like to monitor it. Here’s the obligatory Matt Cutts video in which he talks about toolbar PageRank:

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/google-pushes-new-toolbar-pagerank-update-2012-11/feed 9 PRTracking.com: Track Your Site’s PageRank With Ease http://www.webpronews.com/prtracking-com-track-your-sites-pagerank-with-ease-2012-10 http://www.webpronews.com/prtracking-com-track-your-sites-pagerank-with-ease-2012-10#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2012 21:24:17 +0000 Chad Sweely http://www.webpronews.com/?p=194852 With Search Engine Optimization being such an integral part of how we use the Internet today, keeping tabs on your website’s Google PageRank is more important than ever. We ALL want to have our website appear at the top of our search results, or at least somewhere on the first SERP, but we all know that there are certain rules and guidelines to make it fair for everyone to have a shot at the top spot (or at least close to).

With this in mind, a great tool that the iEntry Network (WebProNews’ parent company) recently released called PRTracking.com will keep tabs on your Google PageRank for you and automatically send you a notification e-mail of any change that occurs. This will allow you to concentrate on other things, so that you do not always have to constantly check your Google PageRank status.

Signing up for PRTracking.com is both fast and easy. All that you have to do is to enter your name and e-mail address (where you would like to be notified about your Google PageRank status), and then you will be ready to set up your URL within PRTracking.

PRTracking will not only notify you of any increases of your website’s Google PageRank, but also decreases as well. This way, you can take immediate action to any hindrances that are negatively impacting your website within Google’s search index.

Please be sure to let us know of any feedback you have pertaining to PRTracking below in this post’s comments section.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/prtracking-com-track-your-sites-pagerank-with-ease-2012-10/feed 0 Google Updates Toolbar PageRank Again http://www.webpronews.com/google-updates-toolbar-pagerank-again-2012-08 http://www.webpronews.com/google-updates-toolbar-pagerank-again-2012-08#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2012 18:40:10 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=185088 Google has updated the Google Toolbar PageRank again, for the first time since May. Obviously sites are moving both up and down, but we’re not seeing a ton of complaints so far.

A lot of people are talking about the update on Twitter. Some are more enthusiastic than others. There are a few interesting nuggets out there.

One person thinks freshness is playing a role in higher PageRank. Google has clearly put a great deal of emphasis on freshness in recent months. Fresh content tends to get surfaced much more. Greater visibility means more chances to pick up links.

Here is a sampling of the Twitter conversation. Hat tip to Barry Schwartz for noticing some forum discussion about the update.

As with last time, I feel compelled to also share this Matt Cutts video talking about how to identify causes of a PageRank drop:

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/google-updates-toolbar-pagerank-again-2012-08/feed 10 PageRank: Is There Anything It Can’t Be Applied To? http://www.webpronews.com/pagerank-is-there-anything-it-cant-be-applied-to-2012-07 http://www.webpronews.com/pagerank-is-there-anything-it-cant-be-applied-to-2012-07#comments Tue, 03 Jul 2012 16:18:19 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=179220 We’ve seen Google’s PageRank algorithm applied to cancer outcome prediction and used to determine molecular shapes and chemical reactions. Now, PageRank is being used to reveal soccer teams’ strategies.

MIT’s technology review points to a paper from Javier Lopez Pena at University College London and Hugo Touchette at Queen Mary University of London, analyzing soccer strategy, and using PageRank in the process.

The abstract for the study says:

We showcase in this paper the use of some tools from network theory to describe the strategy of football teams. Using passing data made available by FIFA during the 2010 World Cup, we construct for each team a weighted and directed network in which nodes correspond to players and arrows to passes. The resulting network or graph provides a direct visual inspection of a team’s strategy, from which we can identify play pattern, determine hot-spots on the play and localize potential weaknesses. Using different centrality measures, we can also determine the relative importance of each player in the game, the `popularity’ of a player, and the effect of removing players from the game.

PageRank is used to measure player popularity, to predict who is most likely to get the ball. The paper looks at the Netherlands and Spain. Here are the passing networks for each team, as diagrammed in the paper:

Here’s the main section discussing pagerank in the paper:

Pagerank for soccer

The paper has caught the attention of Google’s Matt Cutts, who tweeted a link to the MIT article:

You can read the entire paper here (pdf).

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/pagerank-is-there-anything-it-cant-be-applied-to-2012-07/feed 4 Matt Cutts: Here’s What You Should Read To Learn About Search Engines http://www.webpronews.com/matt-cutts-heres-what-you-should-read-to-learn-about-search-engines-2012-06 http://www.webpronews.com/matt-cutts-heres-what-you-should-read-to-learn-about-search-engines-2012-06#comments Wed, 13 Jun 2012 19:01:59 +0000 Chris Crum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=169712 Google’s Matt Cutts posted an interesting video today, responding to a user-submitted question:

“What resources (textbooks, online PDFs etc) would you recommend to people interested in learning more about LSI, search engine algorithms, etc?”

Cutts first suggests checking out the original PageRank papers. “So there’s a whole bunch of different stuff about the anatomy of a large-scale hypertext search engine and then also a bunch of papers about PageRank,” he says .

Here’s The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Here’s “The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web” (pdf).

Cutts also recommends some textbooks. “One is Modern Information Retrieval,” he says. “That’s got a lot of good stuff about the scoring and the science and thinking about that. And then there’s also one called Managing Gigabytes. I think Ian Witten wrote that one. And that one is just a little bit more about the logistics and being able to horse around that much data and thinking about some of the machine’s issues and how does a large scale engine work.”

Here are some links:

Modern Information Retrieval
Managing Gigabytes

“So those three together, and then of course, you can always do searches,” says Cutts. “Google Research actually has a ton of different papers that we’ve published. So you might want to look into that a little bit as well. But basically PageRank, the early Google papers, can give you an idea of how to write a very simple search engine that can scale to 100 million documents or so, Managing Gigabytes, and Modern Information Retrieval, and that will give you a pretty good view of the sort of different parts of the space.”

Here’s a list of all the areas of focus Google Research has papers on:

Google Research areas of focus

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