PaperRank Implemented on Google Scholar
Today Google launched a new feature over at Google Scholar – a system that ranks scholarly papers and information based upon criteria Google believes researchers value.
Today we’re launching a feature of Google Scholar which will make it easier for researchers to keep up with recent research. From quantum computing to copper binding in prion protein. It’s not just a plain sort by date, but rather we try to rank recent papers the way researchers do, by looking at the prominence of the author’s and journal’s previous papers, how many citations it already has, when it was written, and so on.
There’s more information about the ranking system on the Google Scholar About page.
Google Scholar aims to sort articles the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each article, the author, the publication in which the article appears, and how often the piece has been cited in other scholarly literature. The most relevant results will always appear on the first page.
What’s interesting is how closely related the ranking criteria for Google Scholar are to Google’s Web Search.
Ranking Criteria (Scholar » Web):
Prominence of Author » Prominence of Page
Prominence of Journal » Authority of Site
Previous Papers » Historical Data of Domain
Citations » Links
Date Authored » Date Page is Indexed
First Publication Appears » First Site with Unique Content
Text of Article » Page Content
Rate of Citation » Growth of Links
Citation in Scholarly Literature » Trusted Links
Monitoring how Google implements relevancy on its other search properties can help you improve on your own search engine optimization efforts.
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Michael Nguyen blogs regularly at Social Patterns and is a search engine optimization expert for SEO Inc, a full-service search engine optimization firm.
