Combinatorial Algorithms for Web Search Engines - Three Success Stories
How much can smart combinatorial algorithms improve web search engines? To address this question I will describe research on loadbalancing of index servers and on efficiently detecting near-duplicate web pages. Then, I will survey the field of hyperlink analysis of the web, which has become a flourishing research area after the success of Google's PageRank algorithm and the seminal HITS algorithm by Kleinberg.
Monika R. Henzinger, Google Inc & Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne (EPFL)