Webgraph
Graph of connected web pages
A webgraph is a set of directed links between pages of the World Wide Web. A graph, in general, consists of several vertices, some pairs connected by edges. In a directed graph, edges are directed lines or arcs. The webgraph is a directed graph, whose vertices correspond to the pages of the WWW, and a directed edge connects page X to page Y if there exists a hyperlink on page X, referring to page Y.
01Properties
- The degree distribution of the webgraph strongly differs from the degree distribution of the classical random graph model, the Erdős-Rényi model: in the Erdős-Rényi model, there are very few large degree nodes, relative to the webgraph's degree distribution. The precise distribution is unclear, however: it is relatively well described by a lognormal distribution, as well as the Barabási-Albert model for power laws.
- The webgraph is an example of a scale-free network.
02Applications
The webgraph is used for:
- computing the PageRank of the world wide web's pages;
- computing the personalized PageRank;
- detecting webpages of similar topics, through graph-theoretical properties only, like co-citation;
- and identifying hubs and authorities in the web for HITS algorithm.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Webgraph”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
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