An Introduction to the Use of Link Analysis by Web Search Engines (Amy Langville, NCSU and CofC)

Abstract:  The first-generation search engines struggled to meet user's needs.  Search engines had a tough job to do.  The Web was growing at an exponential rate.  Often thousands of webpages contained information on the query terms.  And spammers were purposefully trying to deceive the search engines.  Fortunately, in 1998, two algorithms came to the rescue.  These two algorithms, PageRank, which is used by Google, and HITS, which is used by Teoma, exploited the enormous directed graph created by the hyperlink structure of the Web to rank the thousands of relevant pages by their importance.  These rankings dramatically improved search, so that nearly every engine today uses some link analysis algorithm.   In this brief survey talk, I'll present the PageRank algorithm (and perhaps the HITS algorithm, if time permits).

---

This is an abstract of a talk to be presented at the 2004 SEAMS Workshop in Charleston, SC. For more information, visit the workshop's homepage at math.cofc.edu/SEAMS.