Google’s PageRank algorithm traced back to the 1940s

A co-worker sent me this link today and I found it very interesting:

http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/googles-pagerank-algorithm-traced-back-to-the-1940s-20100217/

The concept behind Google's search engine success is their PageRank algorithm. Well, it seems that the algorithm was first written in the 40s.

Page Rank checker

If you wonder what's the Page Rank of your website, you can use online tools like this one:
http://www.prchecker.info

PageRank (PR) is the "score" every page gets from every browser. Is the result of an algorithm that takes several inputs (the most important is how many links to other sites you have and the PR of those sites). If you like to learn more about PR, check:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

Sphider

Sphider is an open source search engine made in PHP:

http://www.sphider.eu/

It's easy to download and install and works with the same logic as Google: page ranking.

It helped me to understand better how Google ranks the pages and how their database looks like (of course, Google has more sophisticated techniques in their search engine that they won't reveal, but the base has been published and has been used to develop new engines like Sphider).

I recommend you to give it a try if you're involved in Web Development.