What is Google PageRank

PageRank algorithm developed by Larry Page, hence Page Rank, is a link analysis algorithm mostly refferd to as Google PageRank. It allot a numerical weight to every element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the world wide web, with the intetion of calculating the importance of a document within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is referred to as the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).

The name "PageRank" is a trademark of Google, and the PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,999). However, the patent is assigned to Stanford University and not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford University. The university received 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for use of the patent; the shares were sold in 2005 for $336 million.

It is a known fact that Google assigns every single website page a Google Page rank, which is based on a PageRank algorithm. Pages are ranked on a scale with zero as the lowest and ten as the highest. Interlinking of websites – external as well as inter – holds value so far as PageRank is concerned.

Google View

PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance

How it Works

If the site X links to the site Y, the latter gets credited with a percentage of Site X’s Page Rank which kind of gets passed cover to it. The Site X loses nothing so far as Page Rank is concerned – unless and until the link is to a bad neighborhood or a banned area.

An example to understand the situation better. Site X had a Page Rank of 5, there were only 2 outbound links to Site X. One of the outbound Links was intended to brand new Site Y. Brand new Site Y had 4 outgoing links, with NO other Incoming Links, apart from the one from Site X. Google awarded Site Y a Page Rank of 5.

From this example in real life, it is evident that fewer outbound links on a per page basis means a higher Page Rank.

If Site X in the above example had a huge amount of outgoing links on the page, in that case the percentage of Page Rank passed would have been smaller and the New Site Y would have received a lower rank than the equal rank that was passed.

What it mean

• PageRank tells how important a page is, relatively speaking, compared to other pages.
• PageRank is just one of MANY ranking factors used to determine ranking in search results.
• High PageRank does NOT guarantee a high search ranking for any particular term. If it did, then PR10 sites like Adobe would always show up for any search you do. They don’t.
• The anchor text of a link is often far more important than whether it’s on a high PageRank page.
• If you really want to know what are the most important, relevant pages to get links from, forget PageRank. Think search rank. Search for the words you’d like to rank for. See what pages come up tops in Google. Those are the most important and relevant pages you want to seek links from. That’s because Google is explicitly telling you that on the topic you searched for, these are the best

How to get Hight PageRank

Page Rank improves over time. Though not very often, Google does update the Page Rank, once in say every four to eight months. So link exchange with like-themed sites or quality sites is the best possible SEO strategy.

While engaging in reciprocal linking, make sure you check the amount of outbound links that not only the page has but the overall site as well. Search engines such as Google doesn’t like pornography sites, gambling sites and Link Farms that have thousands of links on them. Unless that is your business, don’t link to any of those types of sites.

You can lose Page Rank and Search Engine Results if you link to sites that are considered Bad Neighborhoods or are Banned. Be alert and make sure you check before linking. Though sometimes you may not be “punished”, you won’t be gaining any benefits and the loss in PR of your site is not at all worth it.

Be aware of which sites the outbound links are linking your site to. Check your outbound links from time to time, ensuring that they are:

• Still an active website
• Still a resource for the reason you linked to them in the first place
• They have not changed formats or the theme and continue to be a quality site.