Tracking the random surfer: empirically measured teleportation parameters in PageRank

PageRank computes the importance of each node in a directed graph under a random surfer model governed by a teleportation parameter. Commonly denoted alpha, this parameter models the probability of following an edge inside the graph or, when the graph comes from a network of web pages and links, clicking a link on a web page. We empirically measure the teleportation parameter based on browser toolbar logs and a click trail analysis. For a particular user or machine, such analysis produces a value of alpha. We find that these values nicely fit a Beta distribution with mean edge-following probability between 0.3 and 0.7, depending on the site. Using these distributions, we compute PageRank scores where PageRank is computed with respect to a distribution as the teleportation parameter, rather than a constant teleportation parameter. These new metrics are evaluated on the graph of pages in Wikipedia. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.3.3 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Informati...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: WWW
• Authors: David F. Gleich, Paul G. Constantine, Abraham D. Flaxman, Asela Gunawardana
• Keywords: Click Trail Analysis, Constant Teleportation Parameter, Internet Technology, Teleportation Parameter, WWW 2010