A Brief History of Google PageRank
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2025 3:45 am
The history of Google PageRank dates back to 1996, when Sergey Brin and Larry Page created the algorithm as part of a study of the inner workings of search engines.
The two had the brilliant idea that information on the web could be systematically sorted by ranking content based on link popularity. Web pages that attracted the most links would be considered the most popular and would therefore rank above the rest.
For the brand, the two merged Larry's surname with the verb "Rank" to form the compound word "PageRank." The ownership rights, in turn, went to his alma mater, Stanford University.
Yes, that's right, it was Stanford University that was awarded the patent for PageRank, which was registered under US patent number 6,285,999 on January 9, 1998. This happened after Sergey and Larry requested help from their university's Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) to commercialize the revolutionary algorithm.
At first, the two, along with Stanford's OTL, tried to sell PageRank to the Internet giants of Silicon Valley. But, fortunately or unfortunately, no one could match their asking price of one million dollars.
It was not until September 2, 1998 that the Google search engine was finally launched, with the PageRank algorithm driving its rankings. This new approach to search engine ranking led to Google growing exponentially, as Internet users increasingly used it to find relevant results.
At the time, the company had no reason to hide information about its revolutionary formula. Google openly explained how the algorithm worked and even provided webmasters with a tool to monitor their PageRank score.
This tool took the form of the now-famous Google Toolbar, which was introduced in 2000 to keep website owners up to date with their PageRank scores (and those of their competitors).
The rise of Black Hat SEO
Over time, however, the company's openness proved to be detrimental to the integrity of its SERP ranking system. Once people understood how the entire algorithm worked, some webmasters developed various black hat SEO techniques to manipulate Google's PageRank.
They began artificially bombarding the web with backlinks and stuffing web hospital mailing address list pages with keywords. This gave rise to link farms, which used bots to rapidly multiply the number of spam backlinks.
As a website owner, all you had to do was pay a small fee to an “SEO network,” and they would have bots randomly distribute your backlinks across a vast network of websites and forums.
Their reach was such that they even invaded the comments sections of blogs. For example, you could find a series of comments with hyperlinks encouraging readers to “click here for magic pills.”
Fortunately, it didn’t take long for Google to detect unnatural links that were desperately trying to manipulate its ranking algorithm. The company’s response was to take drastic measures against illegal SEO practitioners, starting with large link farms posing as “advertising networks.”
This was followed by multiple algorithm updates, such as the Nofollow attribute in 2005, which was introduced to suppress the influence of backlinks posted on forums.
But here’s the thing. While these measures helped clean up the SERPs, they didn’t completely eradicate black hat SEO. The few remaining link farms continued to develop smarter ways to circumvent Google’s ranking algorithm.
For example, as soon as the Nofollow attribute was removed, black hat SEOs changed their tactics and started taking advantage of its loopholes. They used a tactic known as “PageRank Sculpting” to maximize their link juice through Nofollow meta tags.
The two had the brilliant idea that information on the web could be systematically sorted by ranking content based on link popularity. Web pages that attracted the most links would be considered the most popular and would therefore rank above the rest.
For the brand, the two merged Larry's surname with the verb "Rank" to form the compound word "PageRank." The ownership rights, in turn, went to his alma mater, Stanford University.
Yes, that's right, it was Stanford University that was awarded the patent for PageRank, which was registered under US patent number 6,285,999 on January 9, 1998. This happened after Sergey and Larry requested help from their university's Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) to commercialize the revolutionary algorithm.
At first, the two, along with Stanford's OTL, tried to sell PageRank to the Internet giants of Silicon Valley. But, fortunately or unfortunately, no one could match their asking price of one million dollars.
It was not until September 2, 1998 that the Google search engine was finally launched, with the PageRank algorithm driving its rankings. This new approach to search engine ranking led to Google growing exponentially, as Internet users increasingly used it to find relevant results.
At the time, the company had no reason to hide information about its revolutionary formula. Google openly explained how the algorithm worked and even provided webmasters with a tool to monitor their PageRank score.
This tool took the form of the now-famous Google Toolbar, which was introduced in 2000 to keep website owners up to date with their PageRank scores (and those of their competitors).
The rise of Black Hat SEO
Over time, however, the company's openness proved to be detrimental to the integrity of its SERP ranking system. Once people understood how the entire algorithm worked, some webmasters developed various black hat SEO techniques to manipulate Google's PageRank.
They began artificially bombarding the web with backlinks and stuffing web hospital mailing address list pages with keywords. This gave rise to link farms, which used bots to rapidly multiply the number of spam backlinks.
As a website owner, all you had to do was pay a small fee to an “SEO network,” and they would have bots randomly distribute your backlinks across a vast network of websites and forums.
Their reach was such that they even invaded the comments sections of blogs. For example, you could find a series of comments with hyperlinks encouraging readers to “click here for magic pills.”
Fortunately, it didn’t take long for Google to detect unnatural links that were desperately trying to manipulate its ranking algorithm. The company’s response was to take drastic measures against illegal SEO practitioners, starting with large link farms posing as “advertising networks.”
This was followed by multiple algorithm updates, such as the Nofollow attribute in 2005, which was introduced to suppress the influence of backlinks posted on forums.
But here’s the thing. While these measures helped clean up the SERPs, they didn’t completely eradicate black hat SEO. The few remaining link farms continued to develop smarter ways to circumvent Google’s ranking algorithm.
For example, as soon as the Nofollow attribute was removed, black hat SEOs changed their tactics and started taking advantage of its loopholes. They used a tactic known as “PageRank Sculpting” to maximize their link juice through Nofollow meta tags.