Google’s search algorithm named after Larry Page is PageRank. It evaluates the importance of web pages partly by examining the links pointing to them, treating links from important pages as especially valuable.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed PageRank at Stanford University in 1996 while working on an early search engine project called BackRub. Their key insight was that hyperlinks could act like endorsements or citations, offering a way to estimate a page’s importance beyond the words appearing on the page.
The name is a double reference: it evokes a web-page rank and Larry Page’s surname. PageRank helped distinguish Google from earlier search engines, but it has never been Google’s only ranking signal. Modern Google Search uses many systems and indicators, and the public PageRank toolbar was retired in 2016. The underlying concept remains historically important, even though Google’s current ranking machinery is far more complex.