Google research head Peter Norvig says that the search giant’s hallowed PageRank link analysis algorithm is overrated. And always has been.

“One thing that I think is still over-hyped is PageRank,” Norvig said this morning during a question and answer keynote at the search-obsessed SMW West conference in Santa Clara, California. “People think we just do this computation on the web graph and order all the pages and that’s it. That computation is important, but it’s just one thing that we do.

Article from: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/03/google_research_head_norvig_on_pagerank/

PageRank attempts to measure the relative importance of a website based on what other sites it’s linked to. Named for Google co-founder Larry Page – who developed the idea while at Stanford University – the patented technology is a central pillar in the Google Mythology, receiving much of the credit the Mountain View search engine’s rise to world dominance. The PageRank patent actually belongs to Stanford, with Google owning exclusive license rights.