So what is the algorithm?

It may look daunting to non-mathematicians, but the PageRank algorithm is in fact elegantly simple and is calculated as follows:

* PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

where PR(A) is the PageRank of a page A

PR(T1) is the PageRank of a page T1

C(T1) is the number of outgoing links from the page T1

d is a damping factor in the range 0 <>

The PageRank of a web page is therefore calculated as a sum of the PageRanks of all pages linking to it (its incoming links), divided by the number of links on each of those pages (its outgoing links).