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Random Walks on Directed Networks: the Case of PageRank

Santo Fortunato·Alessandro Flammini
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Abstract

PageRank, the prestige measure for Web pages used by Google, is the stationary probability of a peculiar random walk on directed graphs, which interpolates between a pure random walk and a process where all nodes have the same probability of being visited. We give some exact results on the distribution of PageRank in the cases in which the damping factor q approaches the two limit values 0 and 1. When q -> 0 and for several classes of graphs the distribution is a power law with exponent 2, regardless of the in-degree distribution. When q -> 1 it can always be derived from the in-degree distribution of the underlying graph, if the out-degree is the same for all nodes.

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Santo Fortunato, Alessandro Flammini. 2006-09-12. Random Walks on Directed Networks: the Case of PageRank. https://doi.org/10.1142/s0218127407018439

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