Is it a good candidate as an algorithm though? The novel part of pagerank is representing hyperlinks as a connectivity matrix and using the eigenvalues as search ranking. Finding the eigenvalues themselves was not new, and the rest doesn't seem as important in an algorithmic sense.
I don't want you to be right, but... I think you are right. PageRank is an application of an algorithm; seeing a problem in such a way that it can be solved.
I therefore instead nominate the algorithm which Pagerank applies.
