Is the Google's PageRank algorithm a secret?

What is the best ranking algorithm (PageRank, ELO, ...)?

• I want to know a good ranking algorithm and pros and cons, when something has to be considered? Please don't mention fancy machine learning algorithm names(that probably worked on your data after trying a zillion of functions). I would like to know about Pagerank, Elo, which are generally good and work in a vast number of cases, rather than something that work in one special case. Please don't redirect from other questions, because all other questions contain some fancy names. To drive the discussion, below are what I think are pros and cons. Pagerank: pros: propogation algorithm, always uptodate cons: difficult to compute, no edge weighting Elo: pros:easy to compute cons:not always uptodate, dead nodes with very high rating Please suggest references also.

• Answer:

  What type of search is it?  Who is the searcher?  What is the purpose of the search?  For instance, delicious shares is awesome in some niches (ie design and programming and perhaps education). Rand Fishkin talks about Trust Rank & Moz Rank as well.  I don't know all the ins and outs of how his algo calculates Moz Rank (which is an attempt to determine to at what google trusts). http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/mozrank I don't know what MozRank is beyond what would be called the link graph or ones link reputation.  It would seem to me that a combination of algos is the best way to keep black hat SEOs from gaming your ranking algo.  Also, in many cases if you let your users decide or customize searches based on criteria relevant for them, that creates more targeted & relevant searches.