Many people, SEO, webmasters or otherwise have heard and engage with PageRank on a daily basis. But perhaps few know its true meaning. This blog will help you get a grip on the meaning of PageRank, who it was invented by, its purpose, how it affects rankings and how it is measured.
Who invented PageRank?
Larry Page and Sergey Brin were the student minds behind Google, which they invented in the late 1990’s. They believed they could make an Internet Search Engine that not only returned relevant results (from on-page factors like a majority of Search Engines at the time) but also from their ‘importance’ (off-page factors) too. They created an algorithm (which is publically available and publically mind bending) which uses the naturally democratic nature of the web by viewing a link from one page to another as a vote of confidence. PageRank was thus invented by Larry Page and it was even named after him too.
The purpose of PageRank
PageRank is a value calculated using an algorithm and its purpose is to calculate the most important pages on the web. It does this by using the algorithm to assign a number or score to each page it crawls and indexes based on factors external to the page. For example, a page with links from other pages with high PageRank therefore has more importance in the eyes of Google. Therefore, the page receives a stronger amount of PageRank.
How does PageRank affect rankings?
It is common belief in the SEO world that 70% of the factors Google weighs when indexing a website as part of its algorithm are to do with its external hierarchy on the web; also known as importance, which is a factor that PageRank measures. Google themselves also state PageRank as being core to their search methods. So, it’s logical to assume that PageRank is important to rankings, however, it is only one factor of over 200 that Google employs when ranking sites, so it’s not something to get hung up on.
Toolbar PageRank and ‘real’ PageRank
There are two types of PageRank. Firstly, the PageRank we are all familiar with that provides a score between 0 and 10 featuring in Google’s toolbar. The other is the true score that Google assigns a web page known as real PageRank. Real PageRank can be anything up into the millions.
Although the topic is highly debateable, toolbar PageRank is pretty useless for any SEO other than perhaps gauging the general importance of a page and assessing the potential of other pages in terms of link building. The reason for this is in its measurement. Additionally, because we don’t know the ‘real’ PageRank of any given page, PageRank overall is, well, pretty meaningless to us. But the knowledge of understanding how it works, is not.
How is real PageRank measured?
Many assumptions have to be made regarding PageRank purely because there is not enough hard evidence, hence why PageRank is a very debateable subject. However, it is generally accepted that ‘real PageRank’ is measured using a logarithmic scale, the base value of which only Google knows.
How does this affect us SEO’s?
Understanding PageRank as best as possible with the evidence, knowledge and information we do have allows us to not only take advantage of it for the benefit of users and our website but it also provides us with that additional intelligence and ammunition to provide thorough advice and guidance getting the results we’re looking for.
Additionally, understanding that real PageRank is a logarithmic scale imposed onto the toolbar PageRank we can make several useful assumptions:
1) If two webpages have the same toolbar PageRank, they could either have very similar real PageRank’s or completely different ones. Hence why pages with the same toolbar PageRank could rank very differently to one another. Conversely, two pages with similar toolbar PageRank’s (e.g. 2/10 and 3/10) could have very similar real PageRank’s.
2) We can speculate with strong certainty that real PageRank is used in Google’s mystical algorithm due to its importance in rankings and calculating off-page hierarchy.
3) Each toolbar rank is exponentially (assuming the real PageRank is logarithmic) greater than the last. This means that getting from PageRank 1/10 to PageRank 2/10 could take fairly minimal effort. However, getting from PageRank 6/10 to PageRank 7/10 could be hugely challenging due to the wide range of values that each toolbar PageRank could represent.
So, although you shouldn’t become obsessed with PageRank, get it tattooed on your forehead or write it in permanent marker on every wall in your home, this information is worth considering when you’re performing your off-page optimisation.
More intelligence means more advantage.
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