Technology · Search and discovery
PageRank
A measure of a page's importance computed from the links it receives and from the importance of the pages citing it. It was the basis of the result quality that set Google apart in 1998.
There is no official image with documented origin for this record yet. The museum prefers showing no image to using one of uncertain origin.
History
In the 1998 paper, PageRank appears as an objective importance score that tries to match a person's subjective sense of a page. The intuition is academic citation: a link is a vote, and votes from important pages weigh more.
The method's patent was granted in 2001 and assigned to Stanford University, with Lawrence Page as inventor, according to an encyclopedia summary. PageRank's current use inside Google's systems is not publicly documented in detail, so this record's status is "uncertain" rather than "active".
Dates
- April 1998 Publication · exact date [1]
What the sources say
| Claim | Record | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| First detailed public description | Brin and Page paper, 1998 | 2 · Single primary source | [2] primary |
| Patent | US 6,285,999, granted September 4, 2001, assigned to Stanford; inventor Lawrence Page | 4 · Unconfirmed | [3] map (encyclopedia) |
| Payment to Stanford (May 1999) | US$20,000 Google check to Stanford; the link to the PageRank license is the auctioneer's hypothesis Hypothesis | 4 · Unconfirmed | [4] community |
| Current use | Not publicly documented in detail Interpretation | 3 · Secondary source | [1] primary |
Historical captures
No archived capture has been located for this record yet.
Sources
- The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine — Sergey Brin, Lawrence Page — Google Research, 1998. Source primary · accessed November 2, 2026 · look for a copy on the Internet Archive
- The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine (copy hosted by Stanford InfoLab) — Sergey Brin, Lawrence Page, 1998. Source primary · accessed November 2, 2026 · look for a copy on the Internet Archive
- Google (encyclopedia copy for research, EPFL Wikispeedia) — EPFL dlab. Source map (encyclopedia) · accessed November 2, 2026 · look for a copy on the Internet Archive
- Sergey Brin signed check to Stanford University (auction lot) — RR Auction. Source community · accessed November 2, 2026 · look for a copy on the Internet Archive
Auction description; the link to the PageRank license is the auction house’s hypothesis.
What still needs documenting
- Open the patent record at USPTO or Google Patents
- Terms of the exclusive license between Stanford and Google
- Official statements on PageRank's role today
On GD
GD has followed Google since 2006. Search GD for “PageRank” (in Portuguese)
How to cite
"PageRank", Google Museum (GD), https://gd.eurisko.com.br/museu/en/collection/pagerank/, CC BY 4.0. Reviewed on November 2, 2026.
ID: pagerank · Reviewed on November 2, 2026