[pav3l]

Do they still heavily rely on PageRank? With the amount of traffic data Google has, I would expect more statistical approaches based on what users click (rather than graph algorithms based on how the web is linked) to be the backbone for ranking their results.

[j2kun]

PageRank is definitely still used, although it's doubtfully the sole determinant of ranking results. See http://jeremykun.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/googles-page-rank-...

[technel]

I agree with your statement, but I'm confused by the story in the link... I haven't come across a message board that doesn't use rel="nofollow" in a few years (that NYT article is from 2010). How would these negative reviews bolster his PageRank?

[wahnfrieden]

Google seems to still weight those links, just differently or with less weight.

[franze]

i'm always disgusted when a googler publishes anything about pagerank. yes, google is still using links as a single in their search result, but the original pagerank paper is from 1998, we can sure as hell be sure that they iterrated/rewrote it a few thousand times since then.

every time a (any) googler now publishes a paper (or presentation) about (the old) page rank a horde of too well paid SEOs is pointing to it for the importance of pagerank, and why linking out is bad, and whatever bullshit (i.e.: later in this thread the based on nothing hypothesis about "nofollow") they come up with. everytime it happens, the SEO bullshit dance starts anew. (in my opinion pagerank is thought-cancer, please see my old TC article for more about this http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/startups-linking-to-your-co... )

[iskander]

It's a closely guarded secret but at the very least we know that every page is annotated with many different signals, which are combined with magical secret sauce.