So I think I need to eat my words a little bit. Maybe a lot. I realized after class yesterday that PageRank is not actually a popularity contest at all (because the number of people who visit the page is NOT what goes into the ranking, but rather the number of links to and from the page). It is much more similar to a system of academic citing, just like Battelle says. Go figure. I should have named this blog “Battelle Knows…”, because clearly, I don’t.
In any case, I think I can still salvage my question. What if your site has some very authoritative and important information on it, and it is used, supported by a lot of prominent experts but they are all old and not very tech savvy, so they have no websites with which to link to you? I guess the answer is that you do not become the online authority, even if you’re a real authority. Moreover, I suppose this scenario is increasingly unlikely in today’s blogosphere, where more and more people are connecting on the Net. I get it. PageRank really is fantastic. My bad.
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[...] tried to make a similar point in my first reading response, where I asked the question, “What if the experts just aren’t well- linked online? Is Page [...]
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