The Google Matrix is a mathematical matrix used in Google’s PageRank algorithm to rank web pages based on the structure of links between them.
What is the Google Matrix?
The Google Matrix is a square matrix that represents the probability of moving from one webpage to another by following hyperlinks.
It is commonly written as:G=αS+(1−α)N1E
where:
- GGG = Google Matrix
- α\alphaα = damping factor (usually 0.85)
- SSS = normalized link matrix (shows how pages link to each other)
- NNN = total number of web pages
- EEE = matrix with all entries equal to 1
Why is it used?
The Google Matrix helps determine the importance of web pages by modeling the behavior of a “random surfer”:
- With probability 0.85, the surfer follows a hyperlink.
- With probability 0.15, the surfer jumps to any random page.
The steady-state probabilities of this process become the PageRank scores
