You might be interested in a paper entitled "Rank Aggregation Revisited," on this topic. A google search for it will easily turn up pdf copies, for example at
http:\\faculty.cs.tamu.edu/klappi/311/dwork.pdf This is the article that introduced me to the "local kemenization" that I have alluded to once in a while. Forest On Tue, 4 May 2004, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I've noticed something recently: more websites are explicitly listing the > URL of another page, rather than linking to the page itself. > > In part, I believe they're doing this to avoid increasing the ranking of > the mentioned website on search engines such as Google, which use linking > structure to determine positioning in search results. > > Until recently, if you did a search for the word "Jew" on Google, an > anti-semitic website came back as the top result. This is because a large > number of other webpages mentioning the word "Jew" had links to that > website. Many news articles that mentioned this fact (particularly those > on anti-defamation websites) would only mention the offending website by > URL (if at all) so as to avoid linking to it and ultimately contributing > to the problem. > > On the flip side, there's a well-known phenomenon of "Google Bombs" > whereby a group of people all place links to a given website on their > webpages (or in their blogs) and also mention a certain word or phrase. > Google's Pagerank algorithm ends up highly associating that website with > those words, and you end up with cute results like President Bush's > webpage coming up first when you search for "miserable failure." > > I was wondering if anyone had examined Google's Pagerank algorithm (or the > ranking algorithms of any other search engine) as if it were an election > method. Some of the problems search engines are currently facing (for > which I'd bet they'd be willing to fund substantial research) are similar > to strategy issues and fairness criteria satisfaction issues that come up > in discussion here all the time. > > Roughly put, Google treats the web as if it were a set of elections (one > for each word or phrase) with each webpage casting approval votes for any > other webpage at all. > > It also combines elements of Candidate Proxy (or Steve Eppley's Candidate > Withdrawal method, or the method Mike Ossipoff described in November > 2000.) The magnitude of webpage X's vote is determined in part by how > many other webpages are casting votes for webpage X (and also on how many > webpages are casting votes for *those* webpages, etc.) > > It's a very interesting algorithm, in that it elegantly handles voting > loops (A votes for B, who votes for C, who votes for A) and even includes > a random "noise floor" element to increase performance of the system. (A > search for "Google Pagerank" will point you to as many detailed > descriptions as you like.) > > -Bill Clark > > > > -- > Protest the 2-Party Duopoly: > http://votenader.org/ > ---- > Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info > ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info