Search Engine Optimization

Microsoft Releases BrowseRank to Topple Google PageRank

In obsessive, passionate, multi-billion dollar battle against Google, Microsoft made another move. BrowseRank is a new algorithm that looks at user behavior as a cue to the quality of web pages.

• Browse Rank White Paper

Microsoft claims that PageRank has few downs that BrowseRank fixes:

• The link graph, which PageRank relies on, is not a very reliable data source, because hyperlinks on the web can be easily added or deleted by web content creators. For example, purposely creating a large number of hyperlinks is a favorite technique (e.g. link farm and link exchange) of web spammers [7], and such kinds of hyperlinks are not suitable for calculating page importance.
• PageRank only models a random walk on the link graph, but does not take into consideration the lengths of time which the web surfer\ spends on the web pages during the random walk. Such information can be a good indicator of the quality and thus importance of the pages.

Browse Rank has 3 main variables: URL, TIME and TYPE.

URL is a page visited by user

TIME is the time each user spent on a page

TYPE denotes the type of each visit which is a hyperlink or a direct input into the address bar.

Microsoft Engineers randomly sampled 10,000 sites from 5,6 millions index and ran spam test between PageRank, Trustrank, and BrowseRank.

Where Microsoft Gets Data For BrowseRank

• User behavior data can be recorded by Internet browsers at web clients and collected at a web server.
• Many web service applications assist users in their accesses to the web; sometimes they record user behaviors under agreements with them.

Microsoft still holds around 70% in the browser world, so Internet Explorer is the logical application for this algorithm.

Optimization for Browse Rank

I see companies growing out of sand with 50 + employees at 10 bucks per hour doing nothing but browsing client’s websites, with hack tweaks (forgive me tech savvy) like different IPs, proxies and other voodoo to get sites on top with BrowseRank. Don’t miss new opportunity! SEO is entering into a new dimension!

New Direction in Search Engine World?

Aaron Wall said long ago search engines will incorporate user data into algorithms.

Google has personalized search. Click through data is another one.

Now Microsoft officially rolled out an algorithm that looks at nothing but user behavior. SEO is getting harder.

Future algorithms will include a blend of on-page factors, link analysis, human editorial and user behavior. We already have on-page, link analysis and some human editorial.

Expect user behavior to affect search results more in the next 5 years.

Read More:

• Microsoft tries to one-up Google PageRank – CNET