What is Page Rank?

Page Rank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is.

Page Rank 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.

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.

How Does PageRank Work?
1.    Bad incoming links don’t have impact on Page Rank.
2.    Ranking popularity considers site age, backlink relevancy and backlink duration. PageRank doesn’t.
3.    Content is not taken into account when PageRank is calculated.
4.    PageRank does not rank web sites as a whole, but is determined for each page individually.
5.    Each inbound link is important to the overall total. Except banned sites, which don’t count.
6.    PageRank values don’t range from 0 to 10. PageRank is a floating-point number.
7.    Each Page Rank level is progressively harder to reach. PageRank is believed to be calculated on a logarithmic scale.
8.    Google calculates pages PRs permanently, but we see the update once every few months (Google Toolbar).

Which factors do have an impact on PageRank?
•    Each inbound link is important to the overall total. Except banned sites. “PageRank is a form of a voting system. A link to a page is a vote for that page. Higher PageRank pages are viewed by Google as more important. Their votes are given more value by Google — much more value, in some cases. In general, the more voting links, the stronger the PageRank.”
•    Adding new pages can decrease Page Rank. “The effect is that, whilst the total PageRank in the site is increased, one or more of the existing pages will suffer a PageRank loss due to the new page making gains. Up to a point, the more new pages that are added, the greater is the loss to the existing pages. With large sites, this effect is unlikely to be noticed but, with smaller ones, it probably would.”
•    Page Rank can decrease. “You can lose some important links that are no longer linking to your site. PR loss can also occur if some of your linking partners also experience a drop in their own PR, possibly setting off a chain reaction of lower PageRank all through the immediate linking network.”
•    Links from and to high quality related sites are important. “The more closely related the pages, the higher the PageRank amount transferred.” “Linking to high quality sites shows the search engines your site is very useful to your visitors. Unless your site has been around for years and is well established and trusted by Google, this factor will have an adverse effect on your site’s overall ranking. Linking only to high quality content sites will give your site an edge over your competition.”
•    Incoming Links from popular sites are important. If pages linking to you have a high PageRank then your page gains some part of their reputation.
•    Site can be banned if it links to banned sites. “Be extremely careful of any out-going links from your site. Don’t link to bad neighborhoods (link farms, banned sites, etc.) Google will penalize you for bad links so always check the PageRank of the sites you’re linking to from your site.”
•    Illegal activities will penalize your PageRank and possibly ban your site from Google. “Hidden text, deceptive redirects, cloaking, automated link exchanges, or anything else against Google’s quality guidelines” can ban your site from Google.
•    Myth: the higher your Google PageRank, the better the results. “While pages with a higher PageRank do tend to rank better, it is perfectly normal for a site to appear higher in the results listings even though it has a lower PageRank than competing pages. [..] Google examines the context of your incoming links, and only those links that relate to the specific keyword being searched on will help you achieve a higher ranking for that keyword.”
•    Related high ranked web-sites count stronger (or don’t they?). “One-way inbound links from websites with topics that are related to your website’s topic will help you gain a higher Page Rank.” Other one-way inbound links from pages with high page rank but unrelated topics do help a little, but not nearly as much.
•    Different pages from a site can have different Page Rank. “Search engines crawl and index web pages not websites, that is why your page rank may vary from page to page within your website.”

How is PageRank calculated?
To calculate the PageRank for a page, all of its inbound links are taken into account. These are links from within the site and links from outside the site.
PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))
That’s the equation that calculates a page’s PageRank. It’s the original one that was published when PageRank was being developed, and it is probable that Google uses a variation of it but they aren’t telling us what it is. It doesn’t matter though, as this equation is good enough.
In the equation ‘t1 – tn’ are pages linking to page A, ‘C’ is the number of outbound links that a page has and ‘d’ is a damping factor, usually set to 0.85.
We can think of it in a simpler way:-
a page’s PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a “share” of the PageRank of every page that links to it)
“share” = the linking page’s PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page.
A page “votes” an amount of PageRank onto each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank that it has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value * 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to.
From this, we could conclude that a link from a page with PR4 and 5 outbound links is worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and 100 outbound links. The PageRank of a page that links to yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important. The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page will receive from it.

Google page rank

Google PageRank Tools & Services
•   PageRank Search
Showing search results in order of PageRank.
•   Google PageRank Inspector.
Google PageRank inspector is PHP scripts that can seek all of your website, include out linked page or not, and display Pagerank value for each of your website pages. New pages linked by high pagerank pages can be indexed in Google quickly and have higher keyword rank in Google search.
•    Google’s PageRank – Calculator
The results produced by the calculator indicate each page’s PageRank share and are not equivalent to the values in the Google toolbar.
•    Webmastereyes, Visual PageRank View
The results will show the page given along with the PageRank of each link on that page. You also have the option to show “nofollow” and external links.
•   Smart PageRank
Checks PageRank from multiple data centers and sends emails automatically if PageRank is updated.
•   Google PageRank Notifier
“This script will send you an email whenever the PageRank of the given page changes. PageRank is taken from the Google Toolbar “API” and is updated once an hour.”
•    Google PageRank Checker (registration required)
You can monitor site’s PageRank via RSS and you can also be notified via e-mail when the PageRank has been changed.

Source:

http://www.webworkshop.net/

http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

Photo source:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/