Bill Slawski recently wrote an interesting post entitled Yahoo Replaces PageRank Assumptions with User Data. In the article, he discusses a "User Sensitive PageRank" patent application filed by Yahoo that addresses the flaws with PageRank. These flaws include the assumption that all links are created equal, bored surfers don't go to random pages, bored surfers don't always go to only trusted pages, pages change value at different rates, and sometimes PageRank calculations cheat.

The Yahoo patent will replace some of these assumptions with user data about how they surf the web.

The title of this post was inspired by the Sphinn discussion that ensued where Matt McGee suggested a new name. Bill further makes the point that PageRank needs to be adjusted:

I think that this points out the value of making a strong site that influences people to stay and look around, focusing upon other things like usability, too.

However, many people believe that Google is doing the same thing. After all, most folks want the PageRank tool to go away, but it's probably just a matter of replacing it with something better.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

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