Josephina Bruin runs a website called "Bruin Bytes," which delivers delicious snacks to students working late at night. But her site doesn't even show up on the first page of search results for Google queries like "late night food UCLA." She looks into search engine optimization and receives proposals from two companies. The first company says that she needs to increase her PageRank by linking to the websites of other popular restaurants, which they will help her do for a modest fee. The second company says that she needs to optimize her Authority score, which they can do for her by creating several pages with high Hub scores that link to Josephina's site. Josephina knows that Google uses both PageRank and Hubs & Authorities to rank search results. The second company asks for a lot more money, but Josephina chooses it anyway. When her business partner, who has not taken SOC 111, asks her why, she says that the first company's approach definitely would not have worked, while the second company's approach made sense. Explain her decision! Josephina Bruin

a. Why won't the first company's approach work? Make sure you provide a explanation of how you get a high PageRank score and why the first company's approach is unlikely to change her PageRank. 

b. Why will the second company's approach work? Make sure you provide a  explanation of how you get a high Authority score and why the second company's approach can improve Josefina's Authority score.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

Josephinas decision seems to stem from a sound understanding of how Googles ranking algorithms speci... View the full answer