Is BrowseRank the new PageRank?

July 26th, 2008 | by Dave
Posted in Google, Live, Microsoft

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Whilst busy rolling out another page rank update should Goolge be worried about Microsofts latest buzzword.

A paper released by Microsofts Asia Research Team shows how BrowseRank would use browsing habits of users to determine search engine positions. In theory this sounds like a great idea and to some extent would aleviate the noFollow paid links saga that continues with Google.

We propose computing page importance by using a ’user browsing graph’ created from user behavior data. In this graph, vertices represent pages and directed edges represent transitions between pages in the users’ web browsing history. Furthermore, the lengths of staying time spent on the pages by users are also included. The user browsing graph is more reliable than the link graph for inferring page importance.

Microsofts BrowseRank

Here in the UK Microsoft search MSN/Live make up around 4% of all searches so nothing to get to worked up about yet, but could this be a defining moment in Search or is Microsofts marketing team desperately running out of ideas as to how they can conquer search.

Google is #1 because it is relevant no other reason, it is going to take more than a fancy buzzword (although I do love the concept) to bring users back to using MSN and Live, the results the search engine currently returns are nothing short of woeful, and you can rank for most 2 and 3 word key phrases just by buying the correct domain name, even with a handful of poor quality links.

So maybe sometime soon Microsoft will start serving more relevant results, but dont hold your breath (seriously don’t it could be ages!!)

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