by Michael Podlesny

Created on: May 02, 2008   Last Updated: January 30, 2009

I was sitting in front of my computer last night, getting ready to do some research for a project that I was working on. A friend of mine promotes various events around the country so he asked me to help him out with the "finding of stuff", as he puts it, or gathering information as I call it.

For whatever strange reason, I am passionate about doing research. Not scientific research, although I am sure that is exciting as well, I am talking about information research. The ability to locate something that can help with a business plan, research paper, or some other type of periodical, is rewarding to me.

While working on my friend's research project, I invariably began with the gold standard of search engines, Google. Beyond their ability to offer keyword related ads that appear in the sidebar in which they overcharge with pay-per-click prices, Google really does a nice job when it comes to the "free" results.

These "free" results are based on the search criteria that a user enters into the search box. Those terms, better known as keywords, are then run through the top secret Google algorithm. It is this algorithm that indexes every page on the internet in the order by keyword importance. So in other words, although you may find two web sites that have good information on lets say stem cell research, one site will appear higher on the search rankings then another based on the Google algorithm.

The Google ranking system, or more commonly known as page rank, is the numerical ranking system by which Google orders every page on the internet. Although no one but the Google founders really knows the exact mathematical computation of the algorithm, all experts do agree to the fact that page rank is based on popularity and importance.

So how does one's web page become popular? Very simply put, when Google crawls the internet it counts the number of links from other web sites that point to another. When Google sees a web site point to another in the form of a link, it marks the site being pointed to as being important. In other words why would a site point to another if there wasn't something in there that had value?

That is the basic definition. The algorithm gets a bit more complicated. Let's say your website has a link pointing to it from the NY Times. We have all heard of the NY Times. It is the most read newspaper in the country, and their website receives literally millions of page hits a day. In the Google algorithm not all links are created equal. Each link is given

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