I don't think so...

I firmly believe they use blockrank now instead.

And I think they have been using it for months... All the changes seen in the SERPS after Florida update can easily be explained by the used of biased pageranks.

We know it is very difficult to achieve continuous updating of the Google index with the old pagerank algorithm... PR computation was very slow... But we can observe actual rolling updates know, and it means they have changed their algorithm. The best candidate is blockrank, combined with other techniques, like "the adaptive pagerank" all developed by the same team from Stanford University (the Kaltix team, enlisted now in Google payroll).

Blockrank can make pr calculations very fast, and it is also a good tool to build "topic sensitive pageranks"...

We can see two different kind of use for "topic sensitive pagerank" in Google Labs : "Site Flavored Search" and "Personalized Web Search". It means there are many thematic pageranks stored in Google index by now.

It is also very easy to use biased pageranks to improve relevancy on special queries... So why Google would not use this technique, which is at hand for them ?

I was puzzled when I read Matt Cutt declarations at the SES conference. Why receiving link from an authority site on a subject is important ? Why should we make links with other sites on the same subject ? If Google still uses the good old pagerank, then each link transmits its pagerank the same way, and the content of the page has no importance... But if they don't use the old algorithm anymore, then it is interesting to discover what kind of algorithm(s) Google uses now, or plan to use tomorrow.

I would be glad to hear your opinion about my theories and thoughts...

I am a bit confused, you asked about PageRank but appear to be talking about Googles ranking algorithm which are two different subjects.

As far as I know Google still follows the original idea of computing relevance first and then adding an increment to the rankings for PageRank which results in the final SERP listings.

The best evidence of this stiil being the case is that Googles PR and backlinks are updated about every three weeks while other aspects of Googles indexing and ranking seem to be almost continuous.

IMO Google maintains a public and a private (for lack of better terms) linking database, and excerpts the linking data at a particular point in time, uses that data to compute PR, with the new PR and backlinks then being set for public view, while in the background new data is being added all the time.

There is much more to Googles relevancy ranking algorithm than PageRank.

I'm with you, Mel.

The private database is "real-time" and works really well. That's why Google serves up relevant and up-to-the minute information.

The public database that fuels the Toolbar and the link: search is synchronized with the private one on a very irregular basis and is very ropy. I always give the benefit of the doubt to a sharp outfit like Google that this is done intentionally (to fool SEO's) rather than out of incompetence.

I think a lot of people are confused about what PageRank really means and does. I was speaking to one of my employees about PageRank and for some reason, he felt that the more relevant your site is the higher the PageRank. One really has nothing to do with the next.

PageRank is simply a vote from page A to page B. The more votes a page has (plus the more votes the pages that vote for you have) the higher the PageRank. So if you have a link from a page on flowers but your page is on computers, the PageRank vote is worth the same as if the link being from a computers page.

Google does not look exclusively at PageRank, if they did that would be a disaster. PageRank is one small part of the overall ranking algorithm.

I am a bit confused, you asked about PageRank but appear to be talking about Googles ranking algorithm which are two different subjects.

No, Mel, I'm talking only about the algorithm Google uses to compute pageranks. What I say is that they don't use the old pagerank algorithm, but an improved algo developed by Kaltix : blockrank.

The best evidence of this stiil being the case is that Googles PR and backlinks are updated about every three weeks while other aspects of Googles indexing and ranking seem to be almost continuous.

It doesn't prove anything. In fact, this topic has been discussed many times : backlinks and PRs are obtained from a separate database. What we call now a "googledance" is only a small update of the data used by the googlebar tool. The discrete changes you see in this special database are hiding the rolling updates of PR and backlinks for the entire index.

The public database that fuels the Toolbar and the link: search is synchronized with the private one on a very irregular basis and is very ropy. I always give the benefit of the doubt to a sharp outfit like Google that this is done intentionally (to fool SEO's) rather than out of incompetence.

I agree with you bwelford ...

Hi Cariboo

IMO PageRank is such a small portion of the Google ranking algo that changes in PR are almost impossible to see in the SERPs, and for this reason cannot agree that the changes in the SERPs can be attributed to a different PageRank algo.

Google has said many times that they use more than 100 factors in computing the ranking of a page and PR is only one of them, and a very small one at that. As an example, after a previous PR update my PR and backlinks went down, but my rankings went up. Another example, one of my PR4 pages ranks higher than a Google PR9 page.

As I see it (others may disagree) in the beginning PageRank was an important part of the ranking algo, but it quickly became gamed by webmasters worldwide, forcing Google into finding newer ways of ranking the relevancy of a page.

I do agree that Google is interested in improving the pagerank portion of the algo, hence the patents for local rank, topic specific page rank, etc, but I see no evidence that these have in fact been been implemented, however if you have some evidence that they have been I am sure it would make a fascinating discussion.

IMO PageRank is such a small portion of the Google ranking algo that changes in PR are almost impossible to see in the SERPs, and for this reason cannot agree that the changes in the SERPs can be attributed to a different PageRank algo.

You're perfectly right about this Mel. It's very difficult to see the effect of a single change in criteria use to rank pages in SERPS.

I talked about the "biased pagerank hypothesis" to explain the massive change in SERPS for competitive queries after Florida update. It is just another hypothesis, but it works as well as "Hilltop" or "a bayesian filter". If google implemented block rank to achieve continuous updates, it happened at the end of summer 2003 (we saw the first proof of a changed rate of updates at this moment). So they were able to use a biased pagerank to make an antispam filter for Florida update in november.

Why am I so sure about their use of Blockrank ? Well, because this algo is very fast (combined with adaptive pagagerank and other tricks, all found by Kaltix, it computes pageranks five times faster than the old algorithm). I haven't seen a clue of any other algorithm with the same characteristics... Other solutions exists, but only this one can be used without any drastic change of Google organisation.

Another clue : we found topic sensitive pagerank in use in the two google lab tools I've already mentioned. Well, it means you can find a set of topic sensititive pageranks in the Google index (i mean the dataset used to create SERPS in response to queries).

Well, but it's very difficult to compute biased pageranks : it is a slow process, and you must use a great computing power to achieve such a result. Unless you compute it on the limited transitional matrix of blockranks...

Yes Cariboo, but Google is still updating the public PR/links only once every three weeks, which it would not have to do if it were using blockrank, would it?

I think a lot of people are confused about what PageRank really means and does.

PageRank is simply a vote from page A to page B. The more votes a page has (plus the more votes the pages that vote for you have) the higher the PageRank. So if you have a link from a page on flowers but your page is on computers, the PageRank vote is worth the same as if the link being from a computers page.


Pagerank isn't a vote. Pagerank is the measure of the quantity and weight of all the links pointing to that page.

Google considers a link from page a to page b to be a vote. So, Pagerank is not a vote, a link is a vote and PageRank is the cumulative measure of that vote.

Yes Cariboo, but Google is still updating the public PR/links only once every three weeks, which it would not have to do if it were using blockrank, would it?

Oh, Google doesn't have to do it, whatever the algorithm may be ;)

You can make a few interesting experiments to understand the way Google really works.

First of all, try to build a search engine, without a link based ranking algorithm, and using content based criteria... Well, on most queries, you obtain many pages with similar notes, and the "best rated" pages are not the more relevant pages... It doesn't work well.

Pagerank is only one of hundred criteria that Google uses to "rate" pages. But PR is a very useful criterion as far as relevancy is concerned. Because it measures link popularity, it prevents pages from being buried in the rankings just because they aren't optimized, and it prevents non relevant pages to appear in the first places.

The conclusion is clear : Google can't work well without any information about pageranks...

Well then, what about new pages ? And what about these very frequent partial (but extended) updates we have ben detecting for months now ?

These new or updated pages appear in the index, and they have their final ranking... So there are pageranks attached to these pages ! Now you have to think about it : what is the best way to compute a pagerank for new or updated pages ?

Another interesting observation to make : Google updates its index more often now. These updates are more frequent than PR and backlinks updates. But do rankings change when Google updates the PR or backlinks database ? Not at all !

That's odd ! PR does have an effect on relevancy and rankings. You change PR, and you can't see changes in the SERPS ...

The explanation is simple : the PR and backlink database is not the database in use to rank the index. It shows PRs computed days ago, and already in use for days. It serves only for two other purposes : the googlebar, and the "link:" functionality. And perhaps to put Googledance fans off the scent... ;)

I noticed also Matt Cutt announced the end of "googledances" and, at least, that PR/backlinks updates will become more frequent in the future.

Anyway, these rolling updates are a puzzle : how google managed to achieve it ? Block rank is a good explanation. But I can take another one, if somebody has a clue.

I do not think we have to abandon all links if we want to do without PageRank, anchor text has been with us from the beginning of Google, and is a much more important relevancy factor than PR IMO.

Just use the same algo as now, but drop out the additional step of adding in Pagerank after the relevancy calculations are done and the SERPs might change a bit but they might not lose their relevancy much at all. Links would still play a big part, but it would not be "dumb" links like PR which is based on more the number of links from and to various pages without regard to the topic of the pages the links are from or the reason for the link. A link that from a PR5 page with only one outbound link counts the same in PageRank if the linker is providing it as an example of excellence or an example of what not to do.

I suspect that attempts to modify the famous PageRank may be more along the lines of correcting the defiencies that have been forced upon PR by zealous webmasters, with a solution such as local rank, which addresses the problem of internal links, multiple linked domains, and sitewide links in one go.

Another interesting observation to make : Google updates its index more often now. These updates are more frequent than PR and backlinks updates. But do rankings change when Google updates the PR or backlinks database ? Not at all !

That's odd ! PR does have an effect on relevancy and rankings. You change PR, and you can't see changes in the SERPS ...

The explanation is simple : the PR and backlink database is not the database in use to rank the index. It shows PRs computed days ago, and already in use for days. It serves only for two other purposes : the googlebar, and the "link:" functionality. And perhaps to put Googledance fans off the scent...

Well as you will have noted I do not believe that PageRank has any affect on relevancy ( which may be why they calculate the relevancy first and then add on the PR) but the reason for not seeing a ranking change when the PR update rolls around is much simpler and is that the data used to calculate PR is IMO based on data at least two weeks old, with some or all of the time between when the data was extracted and the date it is published used for calculating PR.

The old Google dance updates seemed to be a shift from one set of stored page data to another, with possibly an algorithm change thrown in. Now Google seems to be able to update the stored page data incrementally, and the only "updates" we see are algo tweaks. All that remains is the more or less monthly PR update, and the reasons for that should be clear, it takes considerable time to do the PR calculations, and for that reason we are seeing an Update, which as Cariboo has noted, only confirms the suspicions we have had for a couple of week previously.

The other reason I don't think Google will drop PageRank is the same reason McDonalds will not drop thier golden arches, PageRank is synonymous with Google, and trying to rebrand that might not be possible.

Well as you will have noted I do not believe that PageRank has any affect on relevancy ( which may be why they calculate the relevancy first and then add on the PR) but the reason for not seeing a ranking change when the PR update rolls around is much simpler and is that the data used to calculate PR is IMO based on data at least two weeks old, with some or all of the time between when the data was extracted and the date it is published used for calculating PR.

Well, I'm afraid you're wrong. PR has an effect on relevancy. But in combination with other criteria. Without a "link popularity" factor, any page can appear in the first place... Like in Altavista SERPs ;)

If I follow you, it means Altavista had a chance to compete with Fast, Teoma, or Google, as far as relevancy is concerned. Well, good search engines rely on "link popularity" based algorithm. It's a fact !

I suspect that attempts to modify the famous PageRank may be more along the lines of correcting the defiencies that have been forced upon PR by zealous webmasters, with a solution such as local rank, which addresses the problem of internal links, multiple linked domains, and sitewide links in one go.

Well, I know localrank are very popular among the US SEO community. But it is a very old solution (2001) and not an efficient one :(
It would be interesting to make public tests between the two algos (they have many features in common). I've heard of buddies who have done it. And block rank was the winner.

Block rank addresses well the problem of internal links, multiple linked domaines and sitewide links. Faster, better, and simplier. And almost without any human tuning. On the other side, with Hilltop or localrank, you should make many manual adjustments and add a great amount of external information to obtain good results.

The other reason I don't think Google will drop PageRank is the same reason McDonalds will not drop thier golden arches, PageRank is synonymous with Google, and trying to rebrand that might not be possible.

I agree with you about that... So block rank or localrank can be good candidates, because it's still the old pagerank, used differently.

As a former statistician, I was always trained to stick with the simplest explanation until the data forced you to accept something more complicated. This approach was supposedly invented in the middle ages by a guy called Occam.

So here is my current view, whatever PageRank may have meant to those two Stanford guys in their bedroom office.

1. Search Engines pretend that the key factor in choosing one versus another should be relevancy.
2. Unless a Search Engine produces obviously irrelevant results, it is very difficult for anyone to do a comparison of different Search Engines on relevancy. So the key factor is unmeasurable.
3. Google has this PageRank factor that is "widely known" to be important in giving high relevancy results.
4. No other Search Engine has any such 'magic factor'.
5. PageRank is no longer used in the Google search algorithm (although complex information on backlinks is).
6. As a marketing strategy, Google maintains the fiction that their 'magic factor' is still the basis of their USP.
7. So Google does enough to keep an interest in PageRank as a concept. This explains why the Google Toolbar Pagerank is still published, even though it isn't kept up-to-date with any frequency.

Please let me know when the data comes in to force me to change my view.

4. No other Search Engine has any such 'magic factor'.

No other, but Fast/Alltheweb(a pagerank), Yahoo (webrank), Teoma, Webfountain(algorithms derived from HITS)... :rolleyes:

PageRank is no longer used in the Google search algorithm (although complex information on backlinks is).

:confused: How do know that ? I'm sorry, but it doesn't comply with your "Occam Razor" method.

2. Unless a Search Engine produces obviously irrelevant results, it is very difficult for anyone to do a comparison of different Search Engines on relevancy. So the key factor is unmeasurable.
You're right when you say you can't make a direct measure of relevancy. But what you can measure is how people feel about the relevancy of a search engine... Relevancy is a subjective thing. But you can say "this search engine gives more relevant SERPs than this one.
You can't measure it, but you can rank it.

... I'm not sure the average searcher in the street can rank them. Or would even try. Everyone says you Google things now, so why look for something else. :)

Well, I'm afraid you're wrong. PR has an effect on relevancy. But in combination with other criteria. Without a "link popularity" factor, any page can appear in the first place... Like in Altavista SERPs

I really believe you have too much faith in PageRank, which IMO really does nothing much in the Google algo. With PR any page can appear in the first place without respect to the PageRank of the page, or the content even the content of the page, Anchor Text back links can do that job all by itself.

The only place where I can even see PageRank as a serious factor in the rankings is in the event of two pages tieing in the relevacy rankings, in which case it could serve as a tiebreaker, and finding a case where the relevancy is identical and the PR different, would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

Search Engines are about relevancy, and PR has no relevancy factors involved in its calculation.

But it serves as the technical branding for Google (even though other engines use links in much the same way, and it also serves Google well in keeping much of the internet population fascinated by watching the little green bar, and it even drives up the cost of a link, so its a great public relations gimmick.

You've taken the words out of my mouth Cariboo from discussions on this previously about PageRank and its current factors. I knew the algo was old, it was just how to word it. I feel better now, thanks mate.

So little time, so much to do....ouch. I am with ya Cariboo on this one. To many are stuck with older thinking caps, that things don't change. Nice work, keep it up.

If your thinking caps are set to include PageRank as a major or even important factor in Google SERPs then I would suspect that you may be strolling down the garden path, over the river and into the woods.

Any decent search engine is about relevancy and PR simply does not take any relevancy terms into account, which is doubtless one of the reasons that Google have always used other factors to calculate the relevancy of the page, and afterwards added PR on as a bonus. This is pretty clearly spelled out starting from the original design concept.

But Google continues to take the public stance that PR is the heart of their engine, and once having made that statement its hard to do away with PR without creating credibility problems, but its really easy to keep the term in the forefront of publicity releases, on the Google pages and staring every webmaster in the face from the google toolbar. But I am sure every one that frequents these forums is aware that a PR8 alone will not get you rankings.

Relevancy is not the point. We are just wondering what algo Google actually uses now.

Anyway, if you isolate only one criterion, no one is about relevancy. And there is no "relevancy factors" in any algos. But the combination of several (many) criteria, with subtile weight factors, make the ranking of the results possible, and you achieve a somewhat good relevancy with all of them.

Take anchor text for instance. You can have text in links with the same words as in the query, but linking to totally irrelevant pages... Well, if you use only one criterion, your search engine will give back very poor results.

As a matter of fact, a link popularity criterion acts as a "correction factor". This criterion is not more useful than others, and not less as well. But it's an interesting criterion to use in combination with others, because others are giving factual or statistical information about the content of a page, or anchor texts. Link popularity can give more weight to a page that is poorly optimized, but truly "relevant". And give less weight to a page that is optimized, but nobody wants to link to... The lack of correlation between link popularity and content analysis results makes pagerank a valuable correction factor.

Sorry cariboo, but search engines algorithms are about relevancy and search engines are about relevancy. Read the original Google design paper and you will note that google does all its relevacy calculations first and only then adds in PageRank. It not me thats isolating that factor but Google.

As a simple example of why relevancy matters and Pagerank does not, to even be considered for inclusion into the Google ranking pool for a particular word, you first have to have that word either on your page or in your links. That certainly is a relevancy factor IMO.

My points are simply that:
Relevancy is the altar at which all search engines worship, and most searchers too.
Pagerank is not about relevancy.
PageRank is IMO not an important factor in the present Google ranking system, as evidenced by the fact lower PR pages often rank higher than High PR pages.

If you are only looking at what Google is doing with regard to PageRank, then I suspect you are only looking at a very small portion of the ranking algorithm. It never crosses my mind when attempting rankings for a particular keyphrase to consider the PR of the page.

Linking these days is not the freely associated links that were the web when Google was created, linking these days is hundreds of companies set up to help you exchange links, software to find links for you, "advertisements" that will get you 50,000 links to your pages tomorrow, most sites boasting how many pages of reciprocal links they have secured etc etc.

The idea of counting these links as a way to correct relevancy I find either funny or sad, not sure which.

Well, Google computes pageranks separatly, that's a fact. Whether it adds it in its dababase after of before other criterion has nothing to do with the value of the criterion. It takes longer to compute pageranks than other criteria, that's all, so don't search any other reason for their way of doing it.

You must open your mind, Mel. I'm not saying pagerank is relevancy, not at all. But I just wonder how you can build a search engine you'll find "relevant" without a link popularity criterion in it... Well, have you ever tried to do it ? It's an interesting experiment to make... It can give rather good results, but as far as relevancy is concerned, you get better results with a link popularity in it.

So Google pagerank is not only a trick to fool webmasters. It is not as important most people think it is, but it's a criterion you should not throw away like you do. Just take it as you take the other ones.

NO I have never tried to make a search engine, and I really think that is irrelevant to the discussion, which concerns the idea that PageRank has been replaced by something else.

You have the the idea that a search engine cannot produce relevant result without linking factors, and I disagree, and cite for instance the CIRCA technology with is able to select ads relevant to any page without linking information and does it in real time.

My mind is open Cariboo, and I learn new things evey day, but I research and check them before I accept them, so a post in a forum postulating a new theory is not going to be the basis for my accepting anything without some evidence backing it up. I would be intersted in any evidence you have available.

You made a good point Mel : what about semantics ?

I'll be glad to have other opinions about new criteria used by Google. Some people made suppositions about a new semantic factor used by Google, and mentioned already CIRCA technology to be a good candidate for it.

In particuliar, it was Dan Thies' theory to explain the changes in Google by both use of a new algo (block rank) for pagerank and a new criterion : semantics, but only for competitive queries.

I agree with Anthony Parsons... We can't make good assumptions about the best way to optimize pages, without knowing how Google works, or at least have clues about it. And I will be very surprised if they still use the same techniques, criteria and algos they used to in the beginning...

I somewhat agree that we need to understand what are the relevancy factors that Google uses before we can know how to optmize for them, BUT IMO the techniques that I used last year still work fine and get very good rankings, and in fact I have pages optimized in 2003 that still rank well for competitive terms. While I agree that there doubtless have been changes in the way Google ranks pages, they do not appear to be as profound as some would like us to believe, Google among them.

I am inclined to assume that the basic way google processes and ranks the data from the pages it indexes has not changed a lot, but there may be different emphasis placed on one portion or another, as in PageRank being emphasized less and anchor text more. Despite studying all Googles new patents, and trying to digest all the theories that are proposed almost weekly I really cannot find any evidence that any of them are in use, or in fact that they would provide better relevancy, as it seems to me that they are not so much solutions to find new ways to judge relevancy as to plug the holes that Webmasters have poked in the algo, or to find faster ways to handle ever more data.

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that it may be the case that real improvements in search will only come from efforts to understand better what the searcher is looking for, not trying to judge what the webmaster is putting on his page.

Since Kaltix was mentioned, it would be nice to take a further look

Google Acquires Kaltix (http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/kaltix.html)

Andrew Orlowski's article in The Register

Google has bought Kaltix, a three-month-old, three-man Stanford startup that's working on personalized and context-sensitive search. Despite its battalion of PhDs, Google isn't too proud to acquire external search technologies, and earlier this year bought Applied Semantics for its CIRCA ontology, which "understands, organizes, and extracts knowledge from websites and information repositories in a way that mimics human thought".
Google buys search engine – PageRank™ RIP? (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/30/google_buys_search_engine_pagerank/)

Interesting revival Marcia, as I understand Kaltix, it was developed by another couple of chaps from Stanford who figured out some way to compute PageRank much faster than before, and who may also have some insights into LSI.

Since the implmentation of things like LocalRank would seem to be dependant on technology that would allow computation at ranking time, this could be interesting, but it seems to me that the concept has not been developed far enough to allow real time use.

cariboo: "I noticed also Matt Cutt announced the end of "googledances" and, at least, that PR/backlinks updates will become more frequent in the future." Do you have an URL for that quote?

PageRank updates?? What are those.....

We went 3 months with no pagerank update, and we are looking at what like a month and a half or something? I lost count again. Makes me think that we are going to a quartely update, what do y'all think.

--quick comment on the discussion: PageRank being importance is a thing of the past. Its been many moons where PR dictated rankings. A PR3 can beat out a PR6 easily. Many factors influence the rankings, on-site optimization, site relevancy, a big one - link popularity. Link pop (# of backlinks) is way more important that Pagerank (quality + number of backlinks).

MattKP: 48 days as of today. Yes that was a long 106 days between June 22 and Oct 6th. Yep, I would say quarterly. I am guessing Jan 10/2005.

Lets keep in mind when he say a PR3 can easily beat a PR6 that we keep in mind that a site with 200 links can beat a site with 2000 links.

One thing I will have to say that the Rankings on Google follow pretty close but not always is allinanchor.

thanx for the days bob... you still got that page up saying when the updates happen, can you send me the link.

Lets keep in mind when he say a PR3 can easily beat a PR6 that we keep in mind that a site with 200 links can beat a site with 2000 links. -- true.

The funny part of the whole PageRank issue is that there are still a large number of people who think the Page term is referring to a web page as opposed to what it is... a site ranking system named after Larry Page.

MattKP: 48 days as of today. Yes that was a long 106 days between June 22 and Oct 6th. Yep, I would say quarterly. I am guessing Jan 10/2005.


I'll put that date in my diary, as roughly quarterly makes sense. At the moment, I'm still tidying and developing Platinax, but will hold off from a big public launch until after the next PageRank update - the webmastering community still sees PageRank=credibility, and I'd rather start on a convincing foot. Shame it takes so long for the updates - maybe it'll tie in with leaving the sandbox. :)

Anyway - the key question over the past year has never seemed as to whether PageRank is still involved in the ranking of pages, as much as to what degree it needs to be a concern.

After all, with the muddying of backlinks and sparse public PR updates - is this the action of a Google withdrawing from PageRank, or a Google simply trying to remove it from webmaster concerns, so that it can be applied without so much fuss? :)

I, Brian: What if Google is sandboxing PR. Of course I don't believe that! You may want to drop over and visit Shane if you havn't already. He when ahead with out any PR. uncoverthenet.com

Of course PR is involved in Rankings. You need PR or should I saw what brings you the PR to get crawled often and deep. I still say that PR3 or 4 is good to have on all your inventory items. So if you can get a bunch of links to your site map that is aways good.

I say they are just peddling fear, uncertianly and doubt to those that are selling links directly for PR and Ranking. I think what has happened though is the crooks will now have 3 months to rip you off instead of 1 month.

So a PR update will happen and people will sell links for PR value like crazy and if they don't get banned for it they will have bleed enough PR off the site with all the external outbounds to the point where the PR will drop. PRXs will turn into PR(X-1)s and there will be lots of upset people. Google will continue to devalue PR and introduce some thing else but PR will be around for a long time.

This is still worth continuing to look into, no less now than when this discussion first began.

It's a big question whether or not links in any way have something to do with targeting of AdSense running on pages; specifically, whether it's determined strictly by on-page factors, or whether links do, in fact, come into play. Not so much for AdSense itself, but for how it may relate to how Google is looking at pages in relation to outbound & IBLs as well as other factors. It's not impossible that one may give a clue to the other.

It's somewhat of a coincidence that this thread should spring into life again. I wrote only yesterday that I felt that PR or PageRank should be left to die quietly. Given the blogging explosion, I felt there was need for some other measure that could help us all home in on the most relevant stuff, like say an OR or OriginalityRank (http://blog.cre8asite.net/bwelford/index.php?id=P237)

Hey guys,

like all things, PR will soon come to an end, and this is no suprise. The technique is widely publicized, and now out of date. Ifyou think about it, it is very old being from 1998.

The research world has since moved on a great deal, but as always things get tested and developed further and so on. You can expect researchers to have at least looked into and developed early version of new solution just a year later.

PR drawbacks:
The problem of ``spamming'' search engines continues to grow. PageRank, which depends only on in-links to confer importance, is thought to be relatively resistant to spam, but there is a cottage industry which attempts to do just that. (don't remember where I read it)

These are all current:

ElemRank (2003):
This is very similar to pagerank in that it uses links, but is calculated based on the granularity of an element nested in xml.

MAX algorithm (2004):
assumes all a hub node is as good as the authorities pointing to it. A good hub points to at least one good authority.

Hyperlinked Object Temperature Scale (HOTS) (2004).
PageRank (and evidently HOTness) measures the ``attractiveness'' of a page, or what is sometimes referred to as authority." "
Gratifyingly, this very special network model ran, after calibration, in a small multiple (about 2.5) of the time required for the PageRank calculation on a desktop machine. There seems no reason why this approach should not scale in the same way as PageRank to the full web."

HOTS (http://www2003.org/cdrom/papers/refereed/p042/paper42_html/p42-tomlin.htm)


Pagerank:
Calculated from the sum of 2 probabilities:
The probability of visiting a page at random (random surfer model) + the probability of visiting a page by navigating through other pages. (sum of normalized pageranks of all documents that link to a page x probability of navigation)

Overview here:
Ziyang Wang (http://csdocs.cs.nyu.edu/Dienst/Repository/2.0/Body/ncstrl.nyu_cs%2fTR2003-846/pdf)

and here:
PageRank altered (http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/papers/2004_new_pagerank_preprint.pdf)

I hope for goodness sakes that they implement something new and interesting because I'm bored of hearing about PageRank.

There's a lowdown of all the common / popular ranking methods on: search-science. (http://spaces.msn.com/members/search-science/)
in the "computers and internet" category.

I agree. A Microsoft page about ASP might have a PR7 but someone else's PR 5 that talks in more detail about ASP can be much more relevant to your search. That said, PR, I believe can still put you over the top in close calls

I think a lot of people are confused about what PageRank really means and does. I was speaking to one of my employees about PageRank and for some reason, he felt that the more relevant your site is the higher the PageRank. One really has nothing to do with the next.

PageRank is simply a vote from page A to page B. The more votes a page has (plus the more votes the pages that vote for you have) the higher the PageRank. So if you have a link from a page on flowers but your page is on computers, the PageRank vote is worth the same as if the link being from a computers page.

Google does not look exclusively at PageRank, if they did that would be a disaster. PageRank is one small part of the overall ranking algorithm.

I agree. A Microsoft page about ASP might have a PR7 but someone else's PR 5 that talks in more detail about ASP can be much more relevant to your search. That said, PR, I believe can still put you over the top in close calls Unfortunately a machine cannot judge the appropriateness of content. That is what PR is about... inbound links vote on popularity of a page for a given topic. The more links the more PR... true it can be played and sites sometimes get better placement for unappropriate reasons... but at this stage it works.
Obviously algorithms change and new engines come with different methods of assessment.
That's why we read everything out there and test.

The funny part of the whole PageRank issue is that there are still a large number of people who think the Page term is referring to a web page as opposed to what it is... a site ranking system named after Larry Page.

..... 'Larryrank' would be a much more appropriate name for the algorithm which makes heaps of companies no longer rank for their unique name on around 80% of the 50 plus IP addresses Google is using now....

yes page rank algorithm is still in use.

Back to your question:
"Does Google still use pagerank algorithm ?"

It is easy to find Google.com is still using it.

Because Google.com has PR10 still.

At least G still use it for itself.

Just like the Google ice cream only G can eat.

:)