48 Design to thrive: Creating Social networks and online Communities google'S pageRank When it was introduced, Google used "PageRank" technology to provide its users with the highest ranked search engine results, and it's interesting that Google did this by taking advantage of a type of social vetting. Basically, Google's algorithms looked at which sites had the most referrals from other sites. Sites with the most links using a particular term would then be listed higher in Google's results page, with the idea being that the more frequently people linked a term to a site, the more likely it would be that search engine users would also think the site was important. Google's search engine thus rewarded sites that had the most social impact. However, this observation about the social nature of Google's PageRank technology doesn't negate my point about users not caring about the functionality of the underlying code. Most Google users have never heard of "PageRank," and, in my experience, those who have think that it refers to page ranking in the search engine when, actually, it's a reference to Larry Page, the Google cofounder who created the algorithms. Users care that they have a positive search engine experience; they rarely care how that experience happens.