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Introduction
Google
runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware and
software. The speed you experience can be attributed in
part to the efficiency of our search algorithm and partly
to the thousands of low cost PC's we've networked together
to create a superfast search engine.
The
heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking
web pages developed by our founders Larry
Page and Sergey
Brin at Stanford University. And while we have dozens
of engineers working to improve every aspect of Google on
a daily basis, PageRank continues to provide the basis for
all of our web search tools.
PageRank
Explained
PageRank
relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by
using its vast link structure as an indicator of an
individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a
link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page
B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of
votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page
that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are
themselves "important" weigh more heavily and
help to make other pages "important."
Important,
high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google
remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course,
important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match
your query. So, Google combines PageRank with
sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that
are both important and relevant to your search. Google
goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a
page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and
the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if
it's a good match for your query.
Integrity
Google's
complex, automated methods make human tampering with our
results extremely difficult. And though we do run relevant
ads above and next to our results, Google does not sell
placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can
buy a higher PageRank). A Google search is an easy, honest
and objective way to find high-quality websites with
information relevant to your search.
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