Ep 16: PageRank was meant to surface the web’s most relevant pages — and it trained everyone to write for the algorithm instead.

PageRank was meant to surface the web’s most relevant pages — and it trained everyone to write for the algorithm instead. Segment 1 — The Cold Open In the fall of 1998, two Stanford graduate students finished a prototype that ranked web pages by counting and weighting the links pointing to them. Larry Page and Sergey Brin called the method PageRank, and they believed it would finally separate authoritative sources from noise. ... AI Disclosure: This podcast is curated by Patrick but uses AI-generated voice synthesis for audio production.