A lot of the research I’m interested in relates to networks –
measuring the properties of networks and figuring out what those properties
mean. While doing some background
reading, I stumbled upon some discussion of the algorithm that search engines use
to rank search results. The automatic
ranking of the results that come up when you search for something online is a great
example of how understanding networks (in this case, the World Wide Web) can be
used to turn a very complicated problem into something simple.
Ranking search results relies on the assumption that there
is some underlying pattern to how information is organized on the WWW- there
are a few core websites containing the bulk of the sought-after information surrounded by a group of peripheral websites that reference the core. Recognizing that the WWW is a network
representation of how information is organized and using the properties of the
network to detect where that information is centered are the key components to figuring out what websites
belong at the top of the search page.
