PageRank is an algorithm developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google, that was used by the Google search engine to assess the importance and relevance of web pages in its index. PageRank operates on the principle of counting and evaluating the quality of backlinks to a web page.
Pages with higher-quality and more relevant backlinks were assigned higher PageRank scores. PageRank was a foundational component of Google's search ranking algorithm, although it is no longer the sole or primary ranking factor used by Google.
The concept of PageRank influenced the development of modern search engine algorithms.