Search Engine Marketing Blog

What is Page Rank?

PageRank is Google’s proprietary software for defining the relative importance of a web page as compared to another page. The software was originally developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University who holds the patent on PageRank. Page and Brin went on to found Google which continues to use PageRank as an important–but not the only–component of its search engine page rankings.

According to Google statements. PageRank indexes web pages and updates its PageRank report about 4 times each year. The individual web pages are reviewed by the Google software to determine not only the number of links incoming to a page, but the importance of the page providing the incoming links. So if page A links to page B, PageRank says B must be more important than A. But, if A has incoming links from X, Y, and Z, that makes B even more important, because A is more important than if A had no incoming links. Another critical thing to remember is that if A has outbound links to B and to ten other sites as well, it is less important to B than if A only had one outbound link.

The second important factor to remember in looking at PageRank listings is that page content is also important. For example, if Page A has inbound links from 10 other pages and all the web pages deal with real estate loans, and they link to Page B which is about scuba equipment. Page A will not help Page B as much as if Page B was also about scuba equipment.

So, by utilizing both links and content when indexing web pages with the PageRank software, Google and other search engines which use the same or similar software, attempt to provide a balanced view of relationships between web pages and how important they are to the web page rankings.

Even though Google appears to rate links higher than content in its algorithms, in fact, the pages which have the best content are ultimately the ones that will get more visitors, both because they provide answers written in an informative and interesting way, and because as more visitors discover the information, the number of ‘hits’ increase as well. So, over time, the best way to improve your PageRank is to provide good content throughout your site. The PageRank doesn’t rank a site, it ranks individual pages.

Another word of caution against depending too much on PageRank numbers is that they lag well behind real time. Sometimes they change for no apparent reason. The web page author cannot rely on a finite formula that if you link to x number of sites who link to y number of sites each your PR will equal Z. It just doesn’t work that way. Your best plan of action is to utilize your web page development time wisely in preparing content laid out in an effective and logical manner which can be easily indexed by the search engines. By following this procedure, your PR number will improve over time.

To increase your PageRank, please view the Search Engine Marketing or Search Engine Optimization services provided by ComCorp, Inc.

Bookmark to: