Google Wiki Pedia: What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers

Sunday 26 June 2011

What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers

Several times in the past few months, I’ve written about new Google features where PageRank was involved. Unfortunately, Google itself has very poor information about PageRank that I could use for those wanting to learn more about it. To solve that, here’s a guide to PageRank, designed for searchers and site owners alike.

This is fairly long article. To help, you can jump to particular sections of key interest, if you like:

Google’s Definition: PageRank As Votes
Recent Google Edits Emphasize PageRank Just One Of Many Factors
PageRank For Searchers: Google Toolbar
PR Stands For PageRank, Not Public Relations
PageRank In The Google Directory
PageRank For SEOs
Seeing PageRank In Search Rankings
PageRank Versus “Toolbar” PageRank
PageRank Tech Talk
Conclusion (Especially For Those Thinking I Don’t Have Time To Read)
Google’s Definition: PageRank As Votes

Let’s start with what Google says. In a nutshell, it considers links to be like votes. In addition, it considers that some votes are more important than others. PageRank is Google’s system of counting link votes and determining which pages are most important based on them. These scores are then used along with many other things to determine if a page will rank well in a search.

Don’t like me speaking for Google? No worries. When Google talks about PageRank at its site, it often links to the Google Technology page, which says:

The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. And while we have dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to play a central role in many of our web search tools.
PageRank Explained

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, 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.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.

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 dozens of 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.

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