Google’s algorithm that determines a webpage’s relevance partly by analyzing backlinks is called PageRank.
PageRank was developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were doctoral students at Stanford University. Its central idea was that a link from one webpage to another could be treated as a vote of importance. Links from highly authoritative pages counted more than links from obscure pages, creating a recursive ranking system.
PageRank helped distinguish Google from earlier search engines, which relied heavily on text matching and manually organized directories. The name combines “Page,” referring to Larry Page, with “web page” and “rank.” Although backlinks remain an important concept in search-engine optimization, Google’s modern ranking systems use many other signals, including relevance, content quality, freshness, usability, location, and search intent.
A common mix-up is confusing PageRank with Google Panda or Hummingbird. Panda was associated with content-quality evaluations, while Hummingbird was a broader search-system update focused on interpreting queries. PageRank is specifically the link-analysis system.