NSF: Researchers Develop Techniques for Computing Google-Style Web Rankings Up to Five Times Faster.
The NSF is reporting that a group of Stanford researchers have found how to calculate PageRank much faster by using a variety estimation techniques. The idea is that the extra time can be used to calculate customized PageRanks for various topics. Eventually, if they get it fast enough, they might even be able to calculate a person PageRank, based on the sites that you link to.
Interestingly, much of this was proposed in the original PageRank paper from when Google's founders were at Stanford. The paper had a number of clever ideas, including a web browser add on that would show a little bar next to each link with the PageRank of the linked page. The idea was to indicate which links were most interesting, and also to help point out bad or broken links. It's too bad that Google's been focusing on the search engine to the exclusion of other PageRank possibilities.
Posted by Aaron Swartz on May 14, 2003 09:56 AM