Google Inside

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 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. Google.com

PageRank has been exported for the public once again. Everyone over at DigitalPoint is going crazy since the PageRank update to know what their new PageRank is. Personally, it doesn’t matter that much to me because I know through other search engines how many backlinks I have PageRank is really being updated all the time, so my rankings are always being effected. PageRank is just the public’s way of knowing how well a site is ranking — or was ranking — as of the last PageRank export. I don’t see it as that useful unless you’re buying or selling links.