The Blog on Branding

How to SEO – What is PageRank?

Welcome back, oh faithful, reader! You previously learned the history of PageRank, which should’ve left you thinking, “Well, that’s nice…but what is PageRank anyway, and what will it do for me?” Luckily, that’s what you’ll learn here.

“Get ready to take notes!”



So read on and become learned:

• But why?
• What is PageRank?
• How does PageRank affect rankings?
• How can I see PageRank?

What’s the Point?

Hopefully, you remember from the last article why PageRank was created. But, let’s briefly review. The men behind Google’s PageRank wanted to create a search engine that beat out the competition – those that analyzed text. Text analysis wasn’t enough – it lacked the human factor. (For those of you who don’t trust the intelligence of the general populace, the rest of this may scare you. But give it a chance!)

PageRank helps Google return results that human visitors find important.

“Human visitors?”

What is PageRank?

Basically, Google assigns a numerical value on a scale from 0-10 to every URL. This numerical value is its PageRank, or PR. According to its creators, PageRank is “an objective measure of its citation importance that corresponds well with people’s subjective idea of importance.”

According to Google’s Technology Overview, PageRank:

• Measures the importance of a webpage
• Considers the importance of each page that links to a webpage

Every URL (webpage) starts with a small amount of PR that increases as other pages link to it. We can assume of course, that these pages are run by people – so in essence, a person, rather than a “page” has linked to that site. Therefore, the aforementioned “human factor” is taken care of.

We can assume (except for you skeptics of human intelligence out there) that people link to pages they consider important, and thus, PR is a reflection of this importance. The higher a webpage’s PR, the more important it is.

Each time a person links to a page, he/she is casting a vote that says, “I think this page is important.”

It’s pretty democratic, except that:

• A page (person) can vote more than once
• Pages with a higher PageRank have weightier votes

So, if I am running a website to promote my organic farm that uses organic pesticides, I’d rather get a link from EcoSMART.com (PR 5) than from HowStuffWorks “Organic Pesticides” (PR 3).

How does PageRank affect rankings?

Google’s Technology Overview says:

“We use more than 200 signals, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. We then conduct hypertext- matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, we’re able to put the most relevant and reliable results first.”

Although PageRank is helpful, it is not the only or most important component of Google’s website ranking. Other factors, such as relevance, are essential. Consider what happens when you conduct a Google search to see why:

1. You enter a search query into Google.
2. Google scans its index for the words in your query.
3. Google sorts through and selects pages relevant to your query.
4. Pages are sorted by PageRank and other signals.
5. Your results appear.

This means that no matter how high a page’s rank is, it won’t appear unless the page is relevant. So, if you do a search for “Mexican restaurants in Pittsburgh,” you can count on receiving a list of Mexican restaurants in Pittsburgh (even if they’re PageRanks are no higher than 3), not a link to Facebook, even though its PageRank is a 9.

“Wait, that’s not a taco…”

How Can I See PageRank?

Now that you know what it is…you’re probably curious as to how you can see the PR of a webpage.

Here’s 2 ways – download one or both:

1. Google Toolbar to see the PageRank meter – the more green that shows in the meter, the higher the PageRank.
2. SEO for Firefox tool – this shows the PR under every Google search results – either automatically or on-demand, depending on your settings.

Realize that these give general measures that are sometimes outdated. They still help as they say something about a page, nevertheless.

Up Next…

You’ve only taken one delicious bite of what PageRank really is. To feel more satiated, stay tuned for the next article to learn how PageRank is measured.

Kara Arnold Want content written for your Brand that shows up #1 on Search Engines and brings you new customers? Contact us.