“The PageRank algorithm behind Google’s success was developed by Larry Page & Sergey Brin in 1998 that judges a page to be important if it is linked to by other important pages that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents”.

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Now after digging the history of iterative ranking algorithms, it shows a number of earlier examples which has been discussed in the most popular HITS algorithm for ranking web pages as hubs and authorities developed by Jon Kleinberg a few years before PageRank. It also illustrates various approaches from the 1960s and 70s for ranking individuals and journals based on the importance of those that endorse them.

A technique that was developed originally by the Harvard economist Wassily Leontief in 1940 that discuss PageRank-type algorithm for ranking sectors of an economy based on the importance of the sectors that supply them based on sheer volume of votes.

Source: Technologyreview.com
Via: Ioch.Org