Authoritative sources in a hyperlinked environment

The link structure of a hypermedia environment can be a rich source of information about the content of the environment, provided we have effective means for understanding it. Versions of this principle have been studied in the hypertext research community and (in a context predating hypermedia) through journal citation analysis in the field of bibliometrics. But for the problem of searching in hyperlinked environments such as the World Wide Web, it is clear from the prevalent techniques that...