Content and link-structure perspective of ranking webpages: A review

The delivery of ranked relevant results is probably the most important factor in making a web search engine acceptable to its users. This inspiration has led the search engine engineers and researchers to conceive ranking algorithms that can provide the most relevant results (webpages) at the top of the Search Engines Results Page (SERP). To rank webpages, several features are exploited in research studies related to the content and link structure of the web. This article discusses and assesses the webpage ranking algorithms proposed in the domains of content-based and link-based rankings in the past two decades. The assessment of these algorithms is done using features extracted from the relevant literature. The strengths and limitations of these features as well as the ranking algorithms are highlighted and discussed. The findings of this work suggest that the link-based ranking factors are still the dominant force in ranking webpages but these alone are by no means enough to fulfill the information needs of the users. An acceptable solution must contain features from both the content based and link-based ranking domains integrated with the temporal features and users' behavior information. Possible future directions are also highlighted.