1,304 research outputs found
Efficient Numerical Methods to Solve Sparse Linear Equations with Application to PageRank
In this paper, we propose three methods to solve the PageRank problem for the
transition matrices with both row and column sparsity. Our methods reduce the
PageRank problem to the convex optimization problem over the simplex. The first
algorithm is based on the gradient descent in L1 norm instead of the Euclidean
one. The second algorithm extends the Frank-Wolfe to support sparse gradient
updates. The third algorithm stands for the mirror descent algorithm with a
randomized projection. We proof converges rates for these methods for sparse
problems as well as numerical experiments support their effectiveness.Comment: 26 page
Ergodic Control and Polyhedral approaches to PageRank Optimization
We study a general class of PageRank optimization problems which consist in
finding an optimal outlink strategy for a web site subject to design
constraints. We consider both a continuous problem, in which one can choose the
intensity of a link, and a discrete one, in which in each page, there are
obligatory links, facultative links and forbidden links. We show that the
continuous problem, as well as its discrete variant when there are no
constraints coupling different pages, can both be modeled by constrained Markov
decision processes with ergodic reward, in which the webmaster determines the
transition probabilities of websurfers. Although the number of actions turns
out to be exponential, we show that an associated polytope of transition
measures has a concise representation, from which we deduce that the continuous
problem is solvable in polynomial time, and that the same is true for the
discrete problem when there are no coupling constraints. We also provide
efficient algorithms, adapted to very large networks. Then, we investigate the
qualitative features of optimal outlink strategies, and identify in particular
assumptions under which there exists a "master" page to which all controlled
pages should point. We report numerical results on fragments of the real web
graph.Comment: 39 page
A Web Aggregation Approach for Distributed Randomized PageRank Algorithms
The PageRank algorithm employed at Google assigns a measure of importance to
each web page for rankings in search results. In our recent papers, we have
proposed a distributed randomized approach for this algorithm, where web pages
are treated as agents computing their own PageRank by communicating with linked
pages. This paper builds upon this approach to reduce the computation and
communication loads for the algorithms. In particular, we develop a method to
systematically aggregate the web pages into groups by exploiting the sparsity
inherent in the web. For each group, an aggregated PageRank value is computed,
which can then be distributed among the group members. We provide a distributed
update scheme for the aggregated PageRank along with an analysis on its
convergence properties. The method is especially motivated by results on
singular perturbation techniques for large-scale Markov chains and multi-agent
consensus.Comment: To appear in the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 201
PageRank optimization applied to spam detection
We give a new link spam detection and PageRank demotion algorithm called
MaxRank. Like TrustRank and AntiTrustRank, it starts with a seed of hand-picked
trusted and spam pages. We define the MaxRank of a page as the frequency of
visit of this page by a random surfer minimizing an average cost per time unit.
On a given page, the random surfer selects a set of hyperlinks and clicks with
uniform probability on any of these hyperlinks. The cost function penalizes
spam pages and hyperlink removals. The goal is to determine a hyperlink
deletion policy that minimizes this score. The MaxRank is interpreted as a
modified PageRank vector, used to sort web pages instead of the usual PageRank
vector. The bias vector of this ergodic control problem, which is unique up to
an additive constant, is a measure of the "spamicity" of each page, used to
detect spam pages. We give a scalable algorithm for MaxRank computation that
allowed us to perform experimental results on the WEBSPAM-UK2007 dataset. We
show that our algorithm outperforms both TrustRank and AntiTrustRank for spam
and nonspam page detection.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure
Multi-Scale Matrix Sampling and Sublinear-Time PageRank Computation
A fundamental problem arising in many applications in Web science and social
network analysis is, given an arbitrary approximation factor , to output a
set of nodes that with high probability contains all nodes of PageRank at
least , and no node of PageRank smaller than . We call this
problem {\sc SignificantPageRanks}. We develop a nearly optimal, local
algorithm for the problem with runtime complexity on
networks with nodes. We show that any algorithm for solving this problem
must have runtime of , rendering our algorithm optimal up
to logarithmic factors.
Our algorithm comes with two main technical contributions. The first is a
multi-scale sampling scheme for a basic matrix problem that could be of
interest on its own. In the abstract matrix problem it is assumed that one can
access an unknown {\em right-stochastic matrix} by querying its rows, where the
cost of a query and the accuracy of the answers depend on a precision parameter
. At a cost propositional to , the query will return a
list of entries and their indices that provide an
-precision approximation of the row. Our task is to find a set that
contains all columns whose sum is at least , and omits any column whose
sum is less than . Our multi-scale sampling scheme solves this
problem with cost , while traditional sampling algorithms
would take time .
Our second main technical contribution is a new local algorithm for
approximating personalized PageRank, which is more robust than the earlier ones
developed in \cite{JehW03,AndersenCL06} and is highly efficient particularly
for networks with large in-degrees or out-degrees. Together with our multiscale
sampling scheme we are able to optimally solve the {\sc SignificantPageRanks}
problem.Comment: Accepted to Internet Mathematics journal for publication. An extended
abstract of this paper appeared in WAW 2012 under the title "A Sublinear Time
Algorithm for PageRank Computations
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