The future of PageRank
Search engines without backlinks
When trying to think of a popular search engine that didn’t use backlinks in their algorithm, the only thought I could think of was the Yandex experiment in 2014. The Yandex search engine announced that removing backlinks from their algorithm might finally stop link spam and help them direct their efforts towards quality website creation. Just one year after the announcement, Yandex confirmed that the backlink factor was back in their system.
But why are backlinks so essential to search engines?
While search engines have many signals they use to rank results, backlinks spain mobile database remain one of the most reliable and authoritative criteria needed to form an initial SERP .
Also Bill Slawski said when asked about the future of PageRank:
Google is exploring machine learning and fact extraction and understanding key value pairs of business entities, which means a shift towards semantic search and better use of structured data and data quality. Google is very good at link analysis, which is now a very mature web technology. Therefore, PageRank will most likely continue to be used to rank SERPs.
Another trend Bill Slawski pointed out was in news and other short-lived types of search results: Google told us that for pages where timeliness is more important, such as real-time results (like from Twitter) or news results (where timeliness is very important), it relies less on PageRank.
In fact, there are too few news items in the search results to accumulate enough backlinks. Therefore, Google has been and may continue to work on replacing backlinks with other ranking factors when dealing with news.