Algorithms For Dummies

Understanding the reasoning behind  

the PageRank algorithm

In 1998, when both Brin and Page were still students at Stanford, the quality of 

search results was an issue for anyone using the web. Mainstream search engines 

of the time struggled both with an ever-growing web structure (the next part of 

the book discusses algorithm scaling issues and how to make them work with big 

data) and with a myriad of spammers.

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CHAPTER 11

  Getting the Right Web page 

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The use of spammers in this case doesn’t refer to email spammers (those spam-

mers who send unrequested emails to your Inbox) but rather to web spammers 

(those who know the economic importance of having pages at the top of search 

results). This group devised sophisticated and malicious tricks in order to fool 

search results. Popular hacks by web spammers of the day include: