PageRank Explained – Keeping SEO Simple
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What is Google’s PageRank? If you have ever done any reading about search engine optimization or were just curious how you can get your site to the top of the Google search engine results, understanding PageRank is vital. I’m going to introduce you to the basics of PageRank and also provide a brief discussion on how much you should really worry about PageRank if you are running a website or Internet business.
Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, invented PageRank and it forms the basis for how Google works. Google didn’t become the best search engine in the world by chance, it became the best search engine because it provided the best results. PageRank is in fact the technology that gave Google its competitor-killing edge, a way to greatly improve the accuracy and validity of a search response to a user query.
In essence PageRank provides a means to determine the value of a website for any given search term or keyword phrase. This value is determined by how websites link together with the more popular (and theoretically better) sites receiving more links. It’s these incoming links that help the site have a high PageRank value and thus display higher up in search results.
Let’s read how Google explains their PageRank system:
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.
The key rule to understand is that it is a combination of variables that determine how well your site performs in Google. These are the most important variables to worry about:
- Incoming links to your site.
- The relevancy (to your site’s theme) of the pages linking to your site and the PageRank of these pages.
- The keywords that other sites use to link to your site.
- The keywords on your website in particular in places like page titles and headlines.
Some of those factors you can control, others you can manipulate but not directly control. The important thing to understand regarding PageRank is that all those variables will determine how high your site shows up in search engine results. PageRank is the name for the technology that ranks sites and includes all those variables and many more.
PageRank Numbers – The Little Green Bar
If you install the Google Toolbar into your browser you can choose to switch on the PageRank display (it’s in the options). This will make a little green bar appear above web pages you visit. The green bar represents the PageRank of the page you are viewing in your browser. The ranking starts at 0 (no ranking) up to 10, the highest ranking and can be blanked out completely if the page has been banned from Google. If you don’t want to use the toolbar you can try this free PageRank lookup tool to find the ranking for any web address.
Google created quite a storm when it launched its green PageRank bar. Webmasters became obsessed with methods to increase their PageRank and high PageRank sites started selling text links for hundreds of dollars. A link from a high PageRank page, from a PageRank 7, 8, 9 or 10, has been known to make lower PageRank pages increase a full number, even two if the incoming link is from a PageRank 10, and there is no doubt it is good for search engine rankings.
The problem with PageRank being displayed in a little green bar is that it is very hard to really gauge how valuable a ranking is. The Google PageRank technology is complex containing many variables, some of which I mentioned above, and to interpret a number from 0-10, especially when only Google really knows how it works, is difficult. Worse still, the visible representation, the green bar that the public can see, only changes on a quarterly basis, while the real PageRank of a page changes on a daily basis. Most of the time you are looking at a very outdated ranking value.
PageRank paranoia is an issue that every webmaster may fall victim to. There are rumours that Google will be changing the PageRank system because they are not happy with how it is being manipulated and interpreted. As a rule of thumb, watch the green bar with interest but don’t take it too seriously or spend too much time trying to force it to increase (staring and yelling at it will do you no good, trust me on that one).
The Randomness Of PageRank
Search engine optimization experts actively track PageRank and investigate things like page backlinks to try and work out what the top search engine ranked sites are doing right so they can replicate and then surpass them in the rankings. This is a very good strategy for any person running a web business looking to improve their search ranking. There is no need to reinvent the wheel – copy what works and do it slightly better than the competition.
This is all good in theory, but unfortunately there is a good amount of randomness in PageRank and search engine results. Google of course would argue that it’s not randomness and their PageRank system is merely using algorithms that we don’t understand, and no doubt that is true, but for the human webmaster trying to get traffic, PageRank and Google can be baffling sometimes.
There are instances of high PageRanked sites having little to no backlinks. Given that incoming links are one of the most important variables used in PageRank calculations you have to scratch your head and wonder how a site with no links could have a big green bar. Google’s own backlink lookup tool (see this article – Beginners Guide To Backlinks – for details) is another phenomenon that search engine experts often choose to ignore rather than try and evaluate.
Thankfully the randomness of PageRank can result in positive outcomes as well, with your sites jumping high into search results in places where you wouldn’t expect it. The only consistency is randomness but there is logic that can be followed and smart search engine optimization practices that when implemented well will work. Just don’t expect it to work precisely how or when you want it to.
What You Should Know And Do About PageRank
This advice I offer from experience as an avid PageRank chaser and search engine optimizer. The key to gaining PageRank is to ignore it and focus on the variables that control it.
Having people link to your site has always been a good thing and PageRank was in fact a result of this. Don’t get confused with the order of things, first came the Internet and links and then came PageRank. Focus on amassing quality incoming links from quality sites relevant to your site. This practice will naturally improve your PageRank and also increase the amount of visitors coming to your site. Don’t get bogged down chasing links from only high PageRank sites or waste energy adding links from just any site willing to link to you. Do things naturally and your site will grow naturally.
Learn about the importance of keywords. My SEO articles will help you with this. Keywords play a crucial role in bringing the right type of traffic to your site but you should never spend half an hour in front of a computer trying to come up with the perfect title for your article. Name your content logically and think about what search words your audience would use to find your article and you can very quickly and easily develop good keywords without spending hours and hours tweaking every little phrase and heading. See what your competitors do in regards to keywords if you are completely lost.
If you build a good website with good content, always keep in mind your important keywords and proactively work every day to earn and create new backlinks to your site you will improve your PageRank. The best sites with the highest PageRank never worry about PageRank, they simply keep churning out content that people love to link to. This is a strategy that every webmaster and Internet entrepreneur should emulate for success online.
Yaro Starak
Internet Business Coach
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[...] Yaro at Entrepreneur’s Journey explains all about Google PageRank and how it can influence your search engine ranking. [...]
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[...] PageRank Explained Top [...]
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[...] Yaro Starak’s article, “PageRank Explained” explains the basics of Google’s PageRank system and discusses how much you need to worry about the PageRank of your site. [...]
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QuickBits: October 7, 2005
Another eventual week in the life of this serial internet entrepreneur whose gone blogging mad
On Monday I launched my newest blog, BlogNetworkWatch, which as you might have guessed watches the goings on of the blog networks. A nice and quite week … -
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[...] This article of Yaro Starak’s explains the basics of Google’s PageRank system and the importance of churning out content that people love to link to! Entry filed under: [...]
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Links of the Week
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[...] PageRank Explained – Keeping SEO Simple [...]
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[...] The Following is an excerpt from Yaro Starak’s article on Page Ranking in Google. It is reprinted with permission from the author. [...]
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[...] If you read my blog you should be well and truly familiar with PageRank. Most of my SEO posts are laden with the term but just in case you don’t know about PageRank head over and read this article to get yourself introduced to the topic – PageRank Explained – Keeping SEO Simple – this is one of my most popular articles and it should answer your basic questions. [...]
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[...] PageRank Explained – Keeping SEO Simple [...]
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[...] The PageRank update (learn about PageRank) has been occurring over the past 24-48 hours. My friend Alborz, who manages the MyWeblog free blog hosting service has been jumping up and down with glee as his blog went to a PageRank 5. Regardless of what you think about PageRank, an increase can really put a smile on a webmaster’s face. [...]
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[...] PageRank Explained – Keeping SEO Simple [...]
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[...] It’s all speculation am I’m fairly certain it will calm down and settle like usual. When Google plays with PageRank, just like when it was offline for nearly a month last year, all kinds of speculation goes on. It shows despite that fact that we shouldn’t pay too much attention to PageRank it really still has an impact on us Webmasters. We just can’t help but chase the little green bar. [ | Add Your Comment ] [...]
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[...] Months later I wrote a pillar article on my blog introducing the concept of Google’s PageRank and explaining how much attention we, as website owners, should pay to it. (You can read it here – http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/275/pagerank-explained/) [...]
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[...] Of course factors such as how much traffic you have, what industry your site is in, your site’s PageRank (What is PageRank?) and where you place the add code will determine how much you make, but as I said, anything is better than nothing, so it’s worth a try. [...]
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[...] It would be interesting to see how my Page Rank will work, incase you are unfamiliar with Google PageRank, you can check out Yaro’s Google PageRank Explained. But this anticipation is starting to get a little too stressful, I know it sounds stupid but for a webmaster things like a PageRank is all he has and getting a high pagerank can be the difference between making an extra couple of hundred dollars a month from adsense or not. [...]
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[...] Pagerank explained. [...]
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[...] If you have never heard the term PageRank head over to this page and have PageRank explained to you. [...]
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Hoe werkt PageRank?…
Een link van tipt.nl zal zeker helpen
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[...] PageRank Explained – Keeping SEO Simple [...]
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[...] I have a confession to make. Ever since I installed the SearchStatus extension into my FireFox browser I have discovered a new addiction to go right along with my healthy love for PageRank – it’s close cousin, AlexaRank. In this case the bar is blue, and unlike PageRank the statistic AlexaRank represents has more to do with traffic and reach than search engine ranking authority or incoming links, but like PageRank is probably best interpreted as a “fun tool” rather than a definitive way to evaluate a website. [...]
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[...] Text-Link-Ads acts as a brokering service between website owners, in particular blogs, and advertisers wishing to increase traffic by purchasing text links from other sites. Text-Link-Ads accepts blogs through an online application form, categorizes and ranks each site accepted into the program and based on things like traffic, PageRank, AlexaRank, RSS subscribers and other variables, determines how much a link costs. [...]
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[...] For a more technical explanation of how it works, try Wikipedia and an overview from Entrepreneurs-Journey. [...]
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[...] PageRank Explained – Keeping SEO Simple [...]
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[...] my Mozilla Firefox’s Google Toolbar that my site’s PageRank is not blank anymore. I saw green bar! Yes, it is official that my site gets [...]
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[...] approach to advertising and it’s paying off – they have over 5000 daily RSS readers, a PageRank of 7 and an AlexaRank below [...]
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[...] It never ceases to amaze me how much attention the budding webmaster and blogger gives to PageRank (if you are new to PageRank, read this explanation – PageRank Explained – Keeping SEO Simple). [...]
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[...] I’m fairly certain it will calm down and settle like usual. When Google plays with PageRank, all kinds of speculation goes on. It shows despite that fact that we shouldn’t pay too much attention to PageRank. [...]
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[...] frowns upon links purchased purely for SEO sake and in most cases affiliate links do not pass on pagerank because of the structure of the links (although some affiliate programs have figured out ways [...]
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[...] as you like. This sounds interesting in theory, in practice I would wonder how this can affect your PageRank in the long term since Google slapped some bloggers recently by dropping their [...]
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[...] entirely sure I want to write this article. I think one of the best ways to reduce the impact of Google’s PageRank is to talk less about it. If you ignore something it looses all [...]
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[...] PageRank Explained by Yaro Starak [...]
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[...] you are a complete newbie and dont know squat about Page Rank , heres a great post about [...]
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[...] PageRank Explained [...]
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[...] a nutshell, Page Rank is assigned by Google to determine the “authority” of your web presence. It’s [...]
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[...] Do you understand pagerank? [...]
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[...] to fade in importance now, even with Google itself – but here is an article that unfogs it for u http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/280/pagerank-explained/ « előző | YankeeinaNewWorld — 2008. 11. 29. [...]
I came across this not long ago: a PageRank prediction tool. I don’t know how it works, but it does gather it’s data straight from Google. Fascinating stuff!
Even though I am not personally concerned with PR, I am a tinkerer and love finding out how things work. It still is a fascinating subject! – Nards
Hi Andy – thanks for the tool link. I’m not so sure how accurate it is but it’s the first tool I’ve found that seems to be trying. I like it’s result for this blog too!
Also of interest, it predicted a PR 7 for the million dollar homepage. I’d believe that.
Hi Yaro,
Nice article.
I was going to write about this subject myself, but now I think I will just link to this post instead.
It does tie in quite nicely with an article I wrote the other day about the use of link exchanging to boost page rank.
Link Exchange Madness!.
Great article once again yaro.
To Andy, do we know how this prediction works? Do we also know how often google updates pageranks?
Yaro,
Do you know how often Google updates it PR? I have heard that it is about once every 3 months.
I’m curious to know because my darvastrade.com website fluctuates between results 5 and 10 for a search on ‘Nicolas Darvas’.
I don’t understand how it can appear ahead of pages with a higher PR.
Any ideas?
James – I’m only making a wild guess here – maybe the PageRank Prediction tool uses the Google API to get its info. If you click the (check) link next to the results (here’s an example of this site), you’ll see the address points to Google’s domain. The PageRank Prediction tool probably looks for the largest value as its basis of the prediction.
If I can chime in here Dominic, you shouldn’t confuse search engine rankings with actual page rank and toolbar pagerank. Although I believe Google only reindexes the web every 3-4 months, your SERPs can fluctuate within that time frame. Brad Fallon has some good stuff on explaining the difference between PR and SERPs and how they inter-relate.
Dominic – what Will said. Your PageRank effects how well your site performs in search results pages. Visibly the toolbar seems to update about every 3 months (but no doubt behind the scenes it changes constantly). The results in search engine pages are completely dynamic, hence your site is always moving up and down in search engines.
I am not sure how important the PR numbers on the little green bar are. People overemphasize this too much IMO. Sure, it’s one factor – but Google uses over 100 factors in its algorithm. If all other factors are equal, it may put your site above others but keywords and the website text content are more important for me.
Thanks for the article! As a full time developer, this information is exceedingly useful to me.
PageRank does not play a part in keyword ranking. This is why high PR sites do not dominate off-topic keyword areas. Actual PageRank is unknowable (the green bar ‘aint it).
PR is yesterdays news. Instead, think in terms of longevity and community. Search on “Mike Grehan”
Thanks for explaining google page rank.
Great starting article! I recommend reading everything you can about this. You can’t afford to ignore online marketing opportunities.
I have a lot more information on my website. This stuff can get really tricky, and it’s important to not just go out and get a ton of links overnight. My site tries to network people and link related sites.
This site is still in beta, but there is some good information available:
Natural Link Exchange
Great article Yaro, interesting read, thanks.
Nice Article. Do you by any chance know how the paerank formula can be calculated? I understand that it takes the PR of all sites to the equation. But what determines that?
Yaro, I’d have to argue (as Mike Grehan does), that PageRank is now nothing more than green fairy dust with virtually no value at all to a webmaster, SEO or content builder.
If you probe a little deeper into the SEO/M world, you’ll see that this is, indeed, widely known among community members and professionals alike. PageRank was once a very important part of Google’s ranking algorithms, but has gone the way of the Dodo bird and stuffed meta tags.
Anchor text, on-topic links, subject-specific communities and link poularity within them are all much bigger parts of the ranking equation.
However, I like your writing style and blog – keep digging and you’ll find some great stuff in the world of SEO.
Randfish – yes I agree with you that most SEO experts and marketing professionals will understand that we shouldn’t be devoting too much energy to PageRank, however because of it’s visibility and popularity (regardless of value) I still consider it an important factor.
If for nothing else, a high PageRank demonstrates credibility. I have plenty of friends that will look at the greenbar as one of the first things to evaluate a site. If they see a PR 3 or less then they may surf away on that stat alone. If they see a PR 6 or more they pay extra attention.
Yes it’s only a certain type of (perhaps misguided) browser that reacts this way, but that’s the way it is (no doubt Google didn’t intend the green bar to work that way). Until a new green bar comes along or if Google drops in popularity I don’t think PageRank is ever going to be something worth ignoring, despite what the traffic figures tell you or the SEO experts understand.
The fact that this article on PageRank doubled the amount of visitors to this blog demonstrates it’s influence, in a sort of indirect way.
Does the text in , etc.. tags have a great effect on page rank?
Thanks,
Anthony
I disagree with Randfish. It’s true that many or most SEOs consider PageRank to be only a tiny ranking factor these days, but that view has evolved through the years more as a “probably”, and even rumour, than as anything based on evidence. To the best of my knowledge, there has been nothing to suggest that the weight given to PageRank when scoring the rankings has been reduced to being almost irrelevant. Having said that, there’s also no evidence to suggest that its weight hasn’t changed through the years. I disagree with assuming that it’s changed without anything to back it up other than what people say.
I agree completely with the idea of not chasing PageRank, though. Chase IBLs, and the PageRank will take care of itself.
Thought readers might be interested in this blog entry about PageRank and SEO as a web comic -
http://www.nevndave.com/2005/11/28/top-search-engine-optimization-tips/
…There are rumours that Google will be changing the PageRank system because they are not happy with how it is being manipulated and interpreted….
Are you sure?
I believe, google would be more interested in making their search results more relevent than worrying about how people misuse it. Also, that ‘nofollow’ thing being recommended by google shows how helpless they are in this regard.
I understand that google takes into consideration the realevant links to your site when assesing Pagerank, but how long does it take to regognise your links as realevant?
Im currently running a pagerank experiment to sEE if its possible to get a new PR0 site to a P10 in 2 years.
You can view its progress at http://www.pagerank10.co.uk
Lee
Page rank has been the focus of many web developers as sort of a benchmark to how popular the site is even though page rank by many accounts is starting to be devalued and keyword density etc are more important to having your site listed at the top of the engine. With all that said I would still love to have a higher page rank and also for google to update the rank more frequently.
I am also running an experiment with Google Page Rank; I’m trying to see how fast I can get my site up to 5 from initial launch of my site:
AdSimple
I’ll come back with updates.
Well only after 3 weeks my site had a predicted pagerank of 5 in the next update using the future pagerank tool.
http://www.pagerank10.co.uk/pagerank_prediction.php
Although this is only a prediction it shows it can be possible.
Hi Yaro,
Excellent article.
I was going to write an article on this subject but after reading your article i just link your article from my blog website. Nice Job..
Jimmy
http://www.calligraphy-experts.com
Jimmy – Sure, by all means link to this article as an explanation for PageRank, I appreciate the vote of confidence. Cheers!
it really warms my heart to read a post like this. Thanks for explain about pagerank!
I don’t know how many times I’ve said to others (and myself) that pagerank green bar watching is just a futile, frustrating experience, yet when Google updates, my heart goes pitter patter in anticipation of where the little green monster ranks my work
- Kenny
Thanks for the interesting article. There are some good comments to. As for the ranking of search results and PageRank influence on the algorithm, seems maybe the biggest factor can be smart keyword selection (and I don’t mean those worthless META keywords). If you find keywords nobody is optimizing for, it’s a lot easier to jump up in the results.
Thanks for the article Yaro. I know google can be baffling sometimes, and I can attest to the randomness of their search results.
- Bryan
http://www.BryanCFleming.com
I’ve been going through the PR building process again with a new site I started up, Credit Card Debt Reduction, and it’s always a bit of a challenge. Yaro is right, all you can do is focus on what you can control, like link building, on-page SEO, and, of course, content.
Great article. We tried to make our site easy to navigate and added some quality articles and resources for our visitors. We rank well w/ most keywords related to our products but the main keyword “sports memorabilia” we are nowhere to be found. I understand the sandbox theory. But can someone tell me if your PR & baclinks get updated while site is in the sandbox or do you have to wait until it crawls out?
People only want their sites to gain high and high page rank but only some of them have got.While if any blog which is just bogus demanding then how come its page rank would be high.
You always offer really good advice. I have increased my traffic thanks to your newsletters and I appreciate it. Now if I could just get a link from Dooce!
Hi Yaro,
I noticed this page has a PR5 – must be good content!
Thanks for explaining it.
James
hey pls any one tell me how to increased traffic in my site. can u pls send me mail in this id aamirvirani@hotmail.com
some question here:
If there is a page with PR4, and the content doesnt change for over 4 months or even more, and, I dont add inbound link to the page during the time, will the PR down after a google PR changes?
I just started up one of my first sites and I find the idea of page rank interesting. So far I’ve got a 0 but I’ve only been up for a week. How long will it take to update?
How often is the page rank updated?
What is considered to be a good page rank?
HI, I was wondering those Google like those kind of backlink?
http://www.visipixstudio.com In the footer there is a link called Visipix Network.
Thanks for your help and commments.
Eric Senecal
Kevin… page rank lately is updated 3-4 times a year! Good page rank is 5, 6, 7 – it’s hard to get PR 5! You have to work a while!
Great topic yaro! sure cleared up alot for me.
Nice Article. Do you by any chance know how the paerank formula can be calculated? I understand that it takes the PR of all sites to the equation. But what determines that?
You can look up google’s explanation of the PageRank formula, however I don’t think anyone knows exactly how to calculate it from a practical standpoint – only Google technicians.
We are experimenting to see if Affiliate Programs will make a nudge in the search engines. So we’ll see how it will all go. These articles help alot.
So until the next PR update, Google ranks a website on its old PR, despite the fact its current PR may be higher?
Google ranks a site based on a constantly changing PR – what is current in the toolbar doesn’t not reflect the current reality since links to website are always changing.
I have one site that Google indexed on 01. of August, 2006. and I still haven’t got PR on that site. It means that more than 3 months passed and the page hasn’t received any PR. Does someone know how long it takes to get PR?
Thank you Yaro for your article very interesting.
Hi Guys,
I am a luxury retailer and I have three websites working for me promoting my luxury pens:
see http://www.elegant-lifestyle.com
(ConwayStewart banner)
Can any one tell me how I can rank 1-10 on goggle for Christmas gift, Unique Gift, Mens Gift.
Regards
Chuks Uwaechia
Thanks Yaro for the Nice article! As a full time developer, this information is exceedingly useful to me.
Hey Yaro, nice explanation! Thanks for posting this information. Greetz, Tottigol
But what about the text in , etc.. tags… Do they have a great effect on pagerank?
PageRank still bemuses me – is it better to therefore have one-page websites with focussed content linking to you web page and prevent indexing or link follows on your main site…..worth a try.
http://www.advance-entrepreneur.com
Does the text in , etc.. tags have a great effect on page rank?
regards from Poland,
Chris
I trully understand how hard it is to reach a good pagerank, and also how much it takes …to see PR results .Is a very interesting page that keep me udate .
Hi Chris – I don’t think your comment came out right since you may have used code so I don’t understand your question.
Feel free to post again and I will see if I can help.
Yaro
Well the Artical is good. Not very deep but good.
It is funny though, that everyone here tryes to get that ext. links by saying “mysite.com website is…” or the “Comment by mysite.com”.
People, wake up!!! Leave the links and do some work!
PS! Sorry for the “dead” link, but I don’t have a site yet.
dont wanna be a victim of PR paranoia but the strong relation among page popularity and number of essential links you make to your site with PR makes me think it’s a good measure for my site importance. isn’t it true?
I have recently started an Africa travel and Safari forum – http://www.safaritalk.net using Invision Power Board. Does page rank take into account pages that are php? Also as this forum is non commercial it won’t feature many outside links meaning it will likewise receive few inbound links: how can one increase page rank status without a whole list of linking websites other than standard in page optimisation?
Thanks in advance. Matt
Very nice article on google’s PR…it was very helpful.
PageRank ist just one of many criterias that Google uses to calculate the rankings. So a high PageRank doesn’t make a good ranking.
very interesting is the point of getting pagerank without links AND without content. I have a webpage for more than 7 years now, but I never got backlinks and there was a problem with the links on the start page, so the spiders did never follow any link. Additional there was absolutly NO text on the startpage. And the page title was only: welcome at… At the end after 7 years, the page had a pagerank of 3 (But remember: no spidered content, no backlinks). So I guess also the age of a page should be an important point.
Thank you for the explantion of Page Rank. As for myself I was thrilled to see my Page Rank is up to a 2 out of 10! I take it only that I must be doing something right and my content is valuble to some. As far as other sites without any page rank, I find many things valuable in them also. As with anything it can be taken with a grain of salt. Thank you again for the Great information I always find at your site. Cheers and God Bless!
2007 Feb – next PR update this mo ?
Anyone knows ?
Is there a website out there with a PR update history ?
Very Informative article indeed. But i am still confused, why some really popular sites has a page rank of 0?
In my opinion PageRank is just a “number” that people fixate on. People love rankings for things and PageRank is a good example of that.
For instance, one of my site’s is PR5 and it links to another page which is now PR4, I’m guessing solely due to that link (it’s the only link to the page!). It gets very little traffic so I’m a bit confused.
Nonetheless, it can’t hurt to be PR10 can it? By the way, for the math people, what is the base used by PR? Is it base-10? I.e. is PR6 10x as good as PR5?
Mike – http://www.entreblogeur.com/
Good job Yaro!
Find out which Blog Directories are linking back to your blogs and which are only trying to increase their own PR (page rank)
http://blog-dir.blogspot.com/
Do you have any tips on what happens if your PR goes down in value? How do you get it back?
Chesq – just keep focusing on attracting links from authority sites over time and your pagerank will increase. If you are not building new links with higher pagerank than yours your own rank isn’t going to increase.
Page rank is just one of over 400 pieces of information Google uses to determine SERPS. PR alone will not get you a top 10 ranking. Most webmasters don’t realize this, but if they would just focus on creating well optimized pages and inbound links to those pages with their keywords in the anchor text, they will have a much better chance of ranking well for their keywords. This does not happen overnight and as long as you stay the course and repeat your seo efforts over and over you will be rewarded in the end. I have seen site with a PR5 that don’t rank well for anything. IMHO, PR will come last after you have done everything else right.
Going after high PR will not place you on the first page of Google results, it is just not enough. If Google counted just on that manipulatable bar to show its results it wouldn’t be what it is now – the best SE. There are many more important factors that PR that were already mentioned here – links from authority sites, links from relevant sites and etc. Yes, high PR helps but it is far far away from enough.
PS. I doubt that expriment with the PR10 in 2 years will be successful. The function calculating PR isn’t linear and I am sure it depends on some other factors too.
Agreed! PR has so much more weight when coming from an authority site. Having a PR 6 link from a beer authority site to your book & CDs site will not buy you much in the SERPS. But if your books site has a link from Amazon…now that means something to Google and you have a better chance of ranking in the serps.
I am not sure how important the PR numbers on the little green bar are. People overemphasize this too much IMO. Sure, it’s one factor – but Google uses over 100 factors in its algorithm. If all other factors are equal, it may put your site above others but keywords and the website text content are more important for me.
Hi all,
I have recently been working on submitting our website (http://www.applianceplanet.co.uk) to directories with high PR on the listings pages. It has cost us a couple of hundred pounds but I believe with backlinks from high pr pages we will definitely be at an advantage 1 month down the line.
Also, I think most people do not realise that having outbound links on your website leaks some PR so if possible you should change your outbound links to use javascript so google does not pick these up at links.
This is quite a big topic and one factor such as PR is simply not gonna be enough to drive traffic to your website. There are a thousand things one can do.
Does anybody knows, where to download pagerank plugin for Safari(macosx)? Does it exists?
My page rank just dropped from 4 to 5. Did I do something wrong? The only change I have recently made was to add a www in front of my domain name. In other words I usually just use http://susansdesign.com for my Url and then I read something about the important of adding the www. So now I have been adding the www to my domain whenever I add it to some new place. It now is http://www.susansdesign.com Is this really important or did this mess me up?
Any ideas?
Does the text in , etc.. tags have a great effect on page rank?
regards from Poland,
joshua-tree
Hi Joshua,
Unfortunately your code didn’t come through so I’m not sure what you are asking?
I thought your post to SEO was pretty good. I’ve been working on a site called Free For All Reviews and its only about 3 weeks old now but I used a strategy to get my site indexed in Google by obtaining a backlink from another site with a PR of 5. Well in 3 days my site was indexed. I thought that was pretty cool!
i still dont understand how it works…
Very useful article.
Is it true, that PR is less important for SEO than few years ago?
Seo IS and will be SIMPLE no need to keep it simple
Good job.
A while back my PR dropped 1 point to a PR5 (from a PR6). Strangely the visitor numbers have been growing since that so the PR can’t be the only thing to worry about. I’d been a PR6 for way over a year so was surprised at the drop as the content has increased a lot and so has the number of inbound links.
Any ideas?
Mike
Hey Mike – PR changes a lot and it’s very hard to correlate changes in traffic directly to PR since it’s only a very small part of the influencing variables that impact traffic.
Watch the traffic and conversion data, it’s way more important.
Yaro
I believe, google would be more interested in making their search results more relevent than worrying about how people misuse it.
Forum Nox.
I recently experienced ups and downs in pagerank of many pages in last 2 months . Even my blog page fall down from 0 to 2 . I come to know that previous year as well People faced similar problem. Google regular update rank of pages on what basis can anyone tell me ?
very interesting is the point of getting pagerank without links AND without content. I have a webpage for more than 7 years now, but I never got backlinks and there was a problem with the links on the start page, so the spiders did never follow any link. Additional there was absolutly NO text on the startpage. And the page title was only: welcome at… At the end after 7 years, the page had a pagerank of 3 (But remember: no spidered content, no backlinks). So I guess also the age of a page should be an important point.
This is one Great Article that i have ever come accross relating to Page rang. Thanks a lot for the Article Yaro…
Hi Yaro,
One thing I would I like to ask is how often and when google update page rank and backlink
website designing delhi
This is a great Articl yaro… Do you have professional SEO Package with you?
V, i think google only does it quarterly on average. I believe they used to update PR more regularly in the good old days
PR is very importan to SEO,but i still don’t know how to get high PR,my website’s PR still zero
Very useful article.
Is it true, that PR is less important for SEO than few years ago?
Just a little clarification that Page Rank Patent is not owned by Google. It is owned by a Stanford University.
Page rank is only needed when you are selling links. For PR7 you can get 100$ for 1 link!
While saying you should ignore PR, you should also keep in mind that PR is a good indication of your own SEO and whether you are doing it right or not. (although the results may take 3-6 months to show). I have also noted that some links seem to pass PR over time (say 6 months or so) so you may not get PR passed to you until 6 months after you originally get the link
I’am working on my link popularity but i have only one website with Pagerank 5. I live in Poland, and SEO is very poor
Great Article although there is some talk about Google scrapping the Pagerank System in the near future due to the shortcomings in the time it takes for them to update the whole system, and Pageranks do not reflect the true popularity of the page , moreso Alexa appears to be a better indication of Page popularity… Just one for some thought…:-)
cheers
Patrick
i have 2 sites with PR 6. In next update google can i get pr 4 or 5 ;/ ?
I read somwhere that traffic and conversion data are the most important in pr but who knows ,they have over 100 different factors
I have lots of links but no PR. When do you guys think it will kick in?
It appears that Google are scrapping Page Rank according to this article:
http://marketingasolicitor.com/?p=66
God knows how Google rate the web sites and also I completely agree with you Yaro apart of all Google calculation that is very strange for some sites to have only few backlinks and very high PR. For instance I’ve seen sites with only 2 to 3 backlinks and PR5. What kind of calculation is this?
Nice Thanks For Interesting Information about Pagerank….. Helpful For Me….
I wonder if they will tell us what will replace the Pagerank as criterium when they actually do “replace” it.
I have lots of links but no PR. When do you guys think it will kick in?
Thanks for the helpful article! As a beginner, this information is very useful to me. So, tags, content, links have a great effect on the PR.
Well, Linkbuilding should never stop, for me this article was very useful, i thank you very much for that.
By the way, Jeremiah, double-clicking on a word is supposed to select that word. And if you don’t let go after the second click, you can drag to select the whole sentence or paragraph. It’s very handy when you copy and paste a lot.
…God knows how Google rate the web sites and also I completely agree with you Yaro apart of all Google calculation that is very strange for some sites to have only few backlinks and very high PR.
For instance I’ve seen sites with only 2 to 3 backlinks and PR5. What kind of calculation is this?…
Nice Article.As a full time developer, this information is exceedingly useful to me.
And i saw sites with only few backlinks and pr 3 and 4 but those sites were very old … and ugly
Its amazing how simply you explain complex things. Inspiring indeed. SBDC
Thanks for your great advice, Yaro. I run a science website that is slowly growing in popularity — with a page rank of 5 so far — and the insite you provided about Google is useful. I think you’re right when you say that it’s best to focus on providing great content, and the rest will take care of itself. ~ Norm
PR is important, but is not main indicator to how Google arrives at it’s serps. There are many other factors which G puts for weights into.
Thanks, this article really opened my eyes.I really did not know anything about page rank and how to get it.
I do understand what you mean, Anna
I have lots of links but no PR. When do you guys think it will kick in?
Google PageRank is not so important by now but I preffer more than less
thanks for the explanation about this Page Rank everybody is talking about.
Hi Yaro,
wonderful post, hope i have learnt the history of Page rank. Absolutely superb explanation. this is the first time that i came across that even keyword plays a vital role in Google Ranking. thanks for the great information, yaro. i am going to try it for increasing my website PR.
I think that pagerank shout be actualized once a month:) everything will be more clear.
i’ve read a lot of articles on page rank, all of which are convoluted and frustrating. yours makes the most sense. thanks.
And i saw sites with only few backlinks and pr 3 and 4 but those sites were very old … and ugly
Hi Yaro,
Very useful article , Thanks for share.
Yaro,
Good stuff here. Just trying to get my blog off the ground and am enrolled in your Blog Mastermind program. I’ve oftened wondered about Page Rank but really never took the time to investigate it. Now that I’m getting my blog started, it’s something I’ve been much more curious about.
Oddly enough, the second day after my blog went live, I was the 11th position in Google search results for my major keywords: naval, officer, and careers. But, my domain name is navalofficercareers.com, so I’m sure that helps tremendously.
Was about time that somebody explains the Pagerank in a professional way, thank you for that!
Doing SEO is getting changed from time to time and every company needs to take that into account.
great post and discussion!!!
I have just added new tool to check all Google DataCenters for PageRank
Pagerank is not everything but it is still important for websites and blogs to get higher pageranks.
the page rank is definitely important but what is shown in the toolbar is just a marketing instrument, isn’t it?
pagerank or not pagerank. i rely on good content and usability to improve the conversion rate of my website.
Algorithm of Page Rank already is discontinued
Many of the services of Google also need urgent update, is why Google prefers to buy to other companies of Internet.
That small finder that began many years ago very good, because only era of text, very fast and efficient, that antigüo AltaVista moved my, nowadays became a Giant.
But that has happened with the progress of his so promoted PageRank? By the sight it has not evolved in the same way, as much money and they have not managed to optimize it.
In summary the PageRank de Google or PR simply is a numerical value that it represents the importance that a page Web has in Internet, this value is obtained through the bonds that make other pages Web to your site. (it is a summary of the great roll of his operation) the PR has been that has not evolved as it would wish the user it, many webmasters astute position their Web in the first results search of Google and when we make a search as simple as the task of your primary son of the first results that we obtain is companies doing publicity to their products/services and nor to speak of the swindles that abound by Internet.
What happened with the quality of content? , What happened with the Google that invented an algorithm to benefit the searches from the users? Simply it turned towards the money of the publicity and grew like great company forgetting its roots.
As much it forgot its past that now cannot produce some own project, I buy to YouTube because GoogleVideos did not do competition to him.
Purchase technology of other projects Web because although it is certain that it sees future in them, same Google does not have it developed.
It must have given Google account of its own weakness that now has a Laboratory as they call to him for own projects. But and what has of their essence? To as much to arrived the weakness from the PageRank that now Google penalizes to the sites of high PR that sells links, or the case of the page of a well-known Alemana company that was penalized by unsuitable practices of positioning Web. Acting as Goliat is giving bad reputation him to Google.
To many webmasters is to them beneficial to work with Adsense, but victims of a repression feel, to the being directed by norms imposed by the greatest finder of history.
Now we asked ourselves, Who is making its work bad? Webmasters or the PageRank de Google? Although it is certain that webmasters are many bad, also are many more if they are good, that they include/understand that to give content of quality to the users it is more important that to fill to its pages Web of words that position them in the finders.
What is failing in the PageRank? As lack would claim to my grandmother… him to it to be more human, he is incredible that the heart of the finder, does not have the greater budget of investigation and development.
Hay Competition at this moment? Lamentably next as Yahoo and MSN do not approach which the user wishes and for that reason the Monopoly of Google almost is guaranteed.
Inevitably the users little by little could emigrate to another finder, as flock of doves, if this were more cash in the searches, but at the moment Google does not have competition, although personally I have seen some other finders with very interesting characteristics.
They already say: It does not have bad lasts one hundred years, nor body that resists it and in Internet the years are months…
Yaro,
this is the best article on PR I’ve read. As a beginning blogger, I was relieved to read your advice about not spending a half hour trying to look up key words (exactly what i do) but doing it naurally instead (figure out what key words people will enter to read my article and look at competitors keywords.
I read your article at a good time. I’ve been agonizing over how to build viewership. I also appreciate your suggestion to make finding backlinks a daily habit.
Regards,
randy
Sure PageRank still counts, large quantities of incoming links will still get any site a long way.
i am still learning about pr and how to advertise the more i read the more i get confused but a few things are made clear here for me and the mist is clearing a little
Mike, Yes pagerank is updated on a regular basis.
It must have given Google account of its own weakness that now has a Laboratory as they call to him for own projects.
Hi Andy – thanks for the tool link. I’m not so sure how accurate it is but it’s the first tool I’ve found that seems to be trying. I like it’s result for this blog too!
It’s becoming even more clear that having traffic come from very like niche websites should be the main focus of a link campaign. By doing so you will increase the quality of traffic. The end result will that you will also increase your search engine status.
For those who say the green bar means nothing I believe are lying. If Pagerank increases, so do the amount of webmasters willing to link to you and the amount you can charge for advertising. The end result is more incoming links, traffic, sales, and income. As of course Yaro pointed out.
Great article! Many things about Page Rank was hard to understand for me but your article makes it clear.
I have been waiting for Google to assign pagerank to one of my new sites for over six months. Thanks for the link to this pagerank tool.
Nice article with good tips about Google PageRank.
For all the readers from The Netherlands I have translated this article into the Dutch language. Just visit our website and send me an email (with a reference to this blog) to receive your free of charge copy.
This page seems to have a high Page Rank so it adds even more credibility to your advice. Thanks Yaro.
hi mate, do you have any summarized how google computes pagerank? i have an old website that doesn’t have any updates but now on PR 1 while my other website i used to update every time doesn’t have PR. thanks and keep up.!
I has no idea that the page rank criteria were so detailed. Thanks for the explanation Yaro.
Hello Yaro. I founded your site at a time that I was ready to host my new Blog. Let me tell you one thing, I think the becomeablogger.com with your 10 videos was the best thing I came across. I read your blog all the time for new tips from you. I can say I consider you my mentor. I love this post about “page rank”. I have worked hard on my new blog and got my site ranked from pr0 to a pr4 in 44 days. Thanks for all the great and useful content. I know that everyday is a learning experience and I love to learn more and more about everything possible out there on making money with your blog and online. Have a nice day Yaro!.
I think page rank is becoming irrelavant.. if you don’t have great content and great products or services to offer your customers, than your rank won’t matter..A buddy of mine created a blog just for the fun of it, and ended up with 23K back-links…
Great writing, i think it gets to the point of great contribution..
And now after ~4 years this page is PR3. Interesting to see SEOMoz used to comment here. Good post. That about explains page rank.
Hi Yaro,
Thanks for educating me on the importance of PageRank and then letting me know to focus on content instead of worrying about it at this stage of my blog game.
I’m pressing on…
Cheryl
Hey Yaro,
Here I am Again,I just received your Email on Page Ranking.
I Rank #1 for pyradom,because I created this word.If you are
the only one with a certain word,I assume you would have to
Rank #1..
This has been my case now for several years.This has been
this way for me even B4 I began to Blog..So if you are the only
one with a certain word and one word only..You do in fact rank
#1…
If you Google pyradom you can see for yourself…
I guess I have left Foot Prints every where..
To Our Success,
One of your followers,
Gary,
Congratulations Yaro for your work of four years ago, from where some informations are still valid today. Many bloggers and owners of websites runs after backlinks, more backlinks for page rank… What it`s the main difference between all these and a pro bloggers e.g.?
One pro will search for quality one way backlinks and more less of them will monitorize these backlinks. I`m not the first who write these things. In January a known SEO expert afirmed in public that in present it`s not more needed to be a SEO expert to obtain a fast indexing in search engines and even to obtain top positions.
I can confirm that theory, in July 13 I started a little project, only with free methods and I obtained the indexing in Google in less than three days and for a second domain name I obtained the 2-7 position in the first page of Google for few targeted keywords in less than 13 days. These things can be done without have SEO skills indeed, anyone can do when he/her know some things and start to apply those. In my blog it can be found more details.
I had a 4/10 PR and it disappeared about a month now to 0/10 and I know i got some really good backlinks and unique content. So I just don’t worry about it because I am still getting visitors from Bing and Yahoo.
Great post! I have actually been really getting into all of this SEO stuff since I just started my blog. Thanks for the info…it has really helped!!
@Keron: I have the same experience with my pagerank in Google. Although it dropped only from 4 to 2. I was very worried that I would loose my visitors. Fortunately Bing has picked up my website and now most of the the visitors come from Bing. Notice: I also added more unique content. Unique content is still the most important thing that attracts visitors.
Regards, Juan
It seems to me that when Google is working on PR or BL, they throw huge resources into it. If you keep an eye on GoogleBot spidering of a site, the number of spiders per day, reduces drastically, about a week before the new rankings appear, from between 4 and 8 a day, to only one a day.The strange thing is that although this happened up until 17th July, when sites were re-ranked, and then spidering went back to normal, this weekend, it has gone back to just one spider in 24 hours.
Maybe Google is doing something else with their resources, that we aren’t aware of !! Maybe a new ranking system, or BL [backlink] system
People keep saying that PR is not matter, traffic is matter. For some I agree but if you have high PR then google will visit your site often more.
I got PR 3 website and every time I post an article it will inserted into SERP in a matter of seconds.
I was wondering what the fuss was about regarding PR’s. Thanks to this post of yours I am now enlightened. My website just got PR 1 as of today and I’m really happy
I must admit page rank always baffled me. I understand the basic concept of links as a ‘vote’ but when I installed ‘SEO for Firefox’ which display various SEO data in the Google sesrch, I found that some sites which weren’t great had good PR. I have just ocncentrated on writing and linking with good sites. I launched the blog in May and have a PR of 4, I consider that not a bad effort.
Yaro, thanks for the great info on pagerank. This is a great article for those who want an easy way to learn the basics of what pagerank is, and why it’s important.
Maybe the PageRank Prediction tool uses the Google API to get its info. If you click the check link next to the results, you’ll see the address points to Google’s domain. The PageRank Prediction tool probably looks for the largest value as its basis of the prediction. PR is not matter, traffic is matter. For some I agree but if you have high PR then Google will visit your site often more.