July 25, 2008 4:00 AM PDT

Microsoft tries to one-up Google PageRank

Though a distant third place to Google, Microsoft thinks it can teach its rival a thing or two about searching the Internet.

A big part of Google's rise to search engine leadership was an algorithm called PageRank that assesses a specific page's importance by how many other Web pages link to it and by the importance of those linking pages. Microsoft researchers and academic collaborators, though, detailed an idea this week it calls BrowseRank that seeks to bring more of a human touch to that assessment.

Microsoft likes the results BrowseRank, which assigning Web page priority based on how people actually use the site.

Microsoft likes the results BrowseRank, which assigning Web page priority based on how people actually use the site.

(Credit: Microsoft ResearchA Asia)

Essentially, the researchers tested out a system that replaces PageRanks' link graph--a mathematical model of the hyperlinked connections of the Internet--with what they call a user browsing graph that ranks Web pages by people's behavior.

"The more visits of the page made by the users and the longer time periods spent by the users on the page, the more likely the page is important. We can leverage hundreds of millions of users' implicit voting on page importance," the researchers said in BrowseRank: Letting Web Users Vote for Page Importance, a paper from the SIGIR (Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval) conference this week in Singapore. Authors are Bin Gao, Tie-Yan Liu, and Hang Li from Microsoft Research Asia and Ying Zhang of Nankai University, Zhiming Ma of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shuyuan He of Peking University.

Search is of tremendous importance to the Internet for many reasons. For one thing, search engines are highly influential middlemen that steer users to Web sites they may not be able to find on their own. For another, queries typed into search engines can be powerful--and in Google's case highly profitable--indications of what type of advertisement to place next to the search results.

But Microsoft lags leader Google and No. 2 Yahoo in search. It's trying hard to catch up, for example with unsuccessful proposals to acquire Yahoo or its search business that would cost the company billions of dollars. And Microsoft just bought search start-up Powerset.

Google isn't putting all its eggs in the PageRank basket, though.

"It's important to keep in mind that PageRank is just one of more than 200 signals we use to determine the ranking of a Web site," the company said in a statement. "Search remains at the core of everything Google does, and we are always working to improve it."

PageRank shortcomings
The Microsoft researchers argue that PageRank has a number of problems. For one thing, people can game the system by building bogus Web sites called link farms. Those sites feature hyperlinks point to a Web page whose importance a person wants to inflate so it appears higher in search results. Another PageRank issue is that the indexing process doesn't take into account the time a user spends on a particular site.

But user behavior, monitored in anonymous form by Web servers and Web browser plug-ins, can be better, the authors argue.

"Experimental results show that BrowseRank can achieve better performance than existing methods, including PageRank...in important page finding, spam page fighting, and relevance ranking.

The researchers gathered their data from "an extremely large group of users under legal agreements with them," according to the paper.

There's no denying PageRank is useful, though, and such algorithms could be added into a larger formula for determining which sites come out on top of search results.

"It is also possible to combine link graph and user behavior data to compute page importance," the researchers said. "We will not discuss more about this possibility in this paper, and simply leave it as future work."

Bringing research to fruition
It can be a long time before research comes to fruition, but funding a group of researchers can be much less expensive than acquiring other companies. No doubt Microsoft, especially after years of effort and its thwarted overtures to Yahoo, would like to see its in-house search efforts bring Google to its knees.

When accused of being dominant, Google representatives often argue the company could lose its search dominance if somebody else builds a better mousetrap and Internet users divert their path to that other door door. "If Microsoft or Yahoo are successful in providing similar or better web search results or more relevant advertisements, or in leveraging their platforms or products to make their Web search or advertising services easier to access, we could experience a significant decline in user traffic or the size of the Google (ad) Network," it said in its most recent quarterly report.

The top players are a moving target, though. Yahoo is hoping to improve search with three efforts: BOSS (build your own search service), which lets others employ Yahoo search results along with its search ads; SearchMonkey, which lets content publishers build elaborate mini-Web pages into search results; and Glue Pages, which present a smorgasbord of related content alongside search results.

And Google invests heavily, too. Its biggest research team is devoted to search, and the company updated its search formula more than 100 times in the second quarter. And researchers have huge infrastructure at their disposal to try new ideas.

"My group at Google has at its disposal many thousands of machines, with storage measured in petabytes," Udi Manber, head of Google's search quality, said of Google's search research infrastructure in a June talk. And, he added, engineers are empowered to try their results, with meetings once or twice a week to see how well they worked: "There is no separation of research and development. Everyone does both."

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Add a Comment (Log in or register) 24 comments (Page 1 of 3)
by tomkinite July 25, 2008 6:38 AM PDT
Awesome. So now I could write a bot that visits my site several times a day while retaining a long session and get my page rank up that way.

Thanks, Microsoft. You did it again.
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by jamalystic July 25, 2008 7:04 AM PDT
I'm glad that microsoft is regaining its senses. Innovation and not aquisition is the only way MSFT could increase its online relevance. As for this browserRank, i won't rule it as as of yet since the human element in search is now been given enough attention: Will Human-Powered Search Be the Google Killer?( http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=466&doc_id=148885&F_src=flftwo)
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by NWLB July 25, 2008 7:59 AM PDT
Wow, they created a report that says "if we do it better than Google, we'll make money."

I wonder if the report was titled "Like Duh."

Now if they could apply the same thinking to their own products!

To be fair and serious, the web is a fickle thing. If they could really create something people actually get value out of, sure, they could topple Google, as much as Google could then return the favor.

What MS needs to get into its head, is that as more and more younger users mature and enter the marketplace, they are coming to it with deeply rooted and increasingly negative feelings about the company. MS isn't cool. It doesn't do cool things. Its "your daddy's OS," the evil empire, that which must be distrusted, that which won't do a good job, that whose products are always buggy out of the box. MS has to stop trying to fix MSN, MS, or Windows to ever bloody thing it does. It copied that marketing tool years ago trying to be "cool," and it just plain sucks. Right now, exactly what they don't want is to instantly brand everything with a name a lot of folks either hate, don't like, distrust, don't use, or only use because they have too.

If I could get a decent native client for my game software on a Mac, or a Linux system, I'd drop MS entirely.
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by CoalJim July 25, 2008 8:20 AM PDT
I sincerely hope that the unreleased information regarding this 'breakthrough' in search engine algorithm has more to offer. While Google pagerank may not be perfect, it is far more complex, and intuitive than described here. By the way has anyone mentioned to microsoft that link farms are no longer viable link partners, and that if they find anything like that they should submit to Google the offending sites so that their ranking is adjusted accordingly. I want my 2 minutes back.
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by ctbcctbc July 25, 2008 8:28 AM PDT
Re: What MS needs to get into its head, is that as more and more younger users mature and enter the marketplace, they are coming to it with deeply rooted and increasingly negative feelings about the company. MS isn't cool.

I would argue that Microsoft's XBOX divison doesn't have that image. In fact, there's lots of good hype for XBOX-exclusive games (i.e. Halo 3, Gears 1 and 2, etc.). Lots of kids are into these games. XBOX is a long-term investment by Microsoft to enter the living room and compete (boot?) Sony. Search is in the same area: long term investment.
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by masonx July 25, 2008 8:37 AM PDT
Clearly Google Search has peaked and declined in its usefulness in recent years and something better is drastically needed for serious and professional search efforts. Over recent years GS's increasing inaccurate search returns and lack of specificity have become more than frustrating to people who use it as a constant research tool. I'm not exactly sure how site popularity based site ranking tool will improve specificity - I can see how it will sell advertising - lots of commercial spam. It will likely only show topical popularity and the searcher will still not have the more specific information they were seeking. More than likely we are heading to two separate types of search engines - one for very specific information existence and one for social searching to see what Britainy or Paris were (or weren't) wearing yesterday. Somehow the clutter has to be reduced. Google Scholar seems to be more specific effort toward greater accuracy to some degree, but basically it's just a search of professional journals and misses entire fields of information and is no more specific mechanically than Google's regular search.
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by cohaver July 25, 2008 8:49 AM PDT
The Security problems in the DNS is in Windows live Search Look at the History in your Systems UPDATES. Note we should all look at making all types of Search services safer from Phishing and spam type Code.
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by the_piano_man July 25, 2008 9:15 AM PDT
Anytime ms comes out with some "new" idea there is an overpowering miasma that is inherent in the announcement - much like the beginning and end of many of Edgar Allen Poe's stories - they often start out very cheerful but end up grotesque and horrifying. Anyone who knows the real history of Google and ms, knows that Google exists as it is through hard work, good programming, and innovation; whereas ms exists as it is (and got its reputation) through hard work, good lawyers, and copying code and then calling it original - big difference. Get a clue, ms - in spite of all your wonderful deeds - you still resemble (in a somewhat lame way) the main character in the "Cask of Amontillado" - you know the one who built the brick wall . . . read the story - Google won't drink your wine - fools.
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by WhiteRabbit July 25, 2008 10:02 AM PDT
I'm surprised no one else has mentioned it, this BrowseRank system requires relatively personal data to work with. Could this be a privacy concern?
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by miroslodki July 25, 2008 10:16 AM PDT
I agree with masonx

search has become too diffuse
I would rather have a search that returns 10 pages of relevant stuff
and the millions of pages that google returns - especially when one is trying to find content, information as opposed to the latest deal on whatever widget or store

who digs deeper than 10 pages anyway
what if you took some of that cycle time to refine the search
- or even taken 2 more seconds??
what's the rush guys

at the same time I dont think google will fall asleep at the wheel

there is no reason that the google landing page couldn't have a variety of search vehicles
and let people select the one most appropriate

also not sure whether behavior targeting ads will eclipse the gamesmanship of search rankings, key words etc...

great article nonetheless
Miro
http://miroslodki.wordpress.com
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