Google Pagerank

As of 17:45 on the 26th Aug 2012 I have had 1 view of my first post. In an attempt to remedy this fact I am going to exploit Google's PageRank algorithm.

PageRank was developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were at Stamford University. They then went and set up a web search engine, Google, using this algorithm. It assigns a probability of an imaginary web surfer landing on a page by randomly clicking links on other pages. There is also a random element, a probability that the web surfer will enter an address of a web page. 

Currently PageRank is only one of many tools that Google uses to order pages in it's search results, however this link to my first post about USADA's case against Lance Armstrong has approximately doubled it's PageRank.

Proof by hand waving (read at your own risk)

The probability of landing on my first post is simply the random factor divided by the number of pages on the web. Having a second post doubles the chances of landing on my blog. Now we also have a link to my first post on the second post, and random factor is small, we can assume that the probability of moving from the page of the second post to the first is approximately 1. So we add the two probabilities together to get double the initial probability.

If that made no sense I did warn you to read at your own risk. Equations would be nice but that is not one of my main concerns. This blog thing is new to me and I still have to work out/on prettifying it.