PageRank is a system for analyzing and comparing website links used by the Google search engine. The Google PageRank (PR) of a website is a numerical value from 1 to 10 that represents the quantity and quality of the links that point to it from other websites. Basically, Google gives a website a score of 10 for its “link popularity”. No one outside of Google can accurately explain how PageRank is calculated, but it does involve comparing inbound links, outbound links, and inbound and outbound links from the sites you link to. PageRank (named after Google co-founder Larry Page) is one of several parts of Google’s search algorithm that determines what gets to the top of search query results. Websites with a higher PageRank score will often appear higher and more frequently in Google’s organic search results, although a high PR does not necessarily mean a high ranking, and it is certainly possible to get to the top of the results. search engines with a low PageRank.
The more high-quality inbound links, the higher the PageRank number. For example, CNN.com has a PR of 10 and YouTube.com has a PR of 9. Every time someone’s blog is linked to a CNN story or YouTube clip, Google counts it as a positive “vote.” for the site. . Which means it’s a positive statement that the website is valid and useful, and something Google would be comfortable showing as a search result. Hundreds of thousands of “votes” for CNN and YouTube earned them their high PR numbers. However, the biggest impact on a site’s PageRank score comes from links from other websites with high PR scores. Therefore, a CNN or MSNBC (PR 8) story that includes a link to YouTube.com would have a greater and more positive impact on YouTube page ranking than hundreds (maybe even thousands) of blog links with low public relations. A link to a much smaller website, say, a small business with a PageRank of 4, from a large PR actor like MSNBC would have the same great impact. Probably enough of a hit to increase small business PageRank, while three dozen blog links may not even increase it one iota.
If you have a website and are trying to increase the number of links pointing to it, PageRank is one of the things to keep in mind when researching and networking. It’s certainly not the only factor to consider, but if all the links to your website are coming from websites with a PR of 1 or 2, you will find it difficult to increase your own score. Many low-quality links (such as those from popular Link Farms or Link Exchange programs) are filtered by Google and do not count toward a site’s PR score. In fact, an excessive abundance of low or poor quality links can significantly lower a website’s PageRank score. Quality far exceeds quantity within your page ranking system.
The easiest way to check the PageRank of a website is to install the Google bar, which will display the PR of each site you visit. There are also a variety of online tools that will check a website’s page rank for you. A PageRank of zero generally means that a website is fairly new and has not yet been fully evaluated, although it may mean that the site in question is incurring some kind of penalty from Google and is being filtered out of the results of search.
All search engines use link popularity as part of their website ranking algorithms, but PageRank is unique to Google, so a high or low PR will have no effect on how well a person does. website on Yahoo, Bing or any other search engine.
Learn more about Google PageRank and why it matters to your website.