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 Goggle PageRank™ 101
PageRank™ is Google's proprietary system
for ranking web pages according to importance. PageRank (PR from now
on) is a grade (on a scale from one to ten) that Google gives a page
after performing a series of elaborate calculations (Google's PageRank
algorithm) that take into account the page's content, and the number and
quality of pages linking to it.
In a nutshell, the more inbound links a web
page has, coming from pages that (a) have a high PR and
(b) feature similar or complementary content, the higher its PR will
be. The second condition is very important, since a link from a high PR
soccer page to a dog grooming page is unlikely to result in any PR
benefit for the dog grooming page.
The closer a web page gets to a PR of 10,
the higher its importance. A PageRank of 4 or 5 is considered good.
Very few pages attain a PR of 10 (among those few are Yahoo! and Google
itself). Although nobody knows for a fact, it is widely believed that
PageRank is determined using a logarithmic grading scale instead of a
linear one. What this means in layman's terms is that it is much more
difficult for a web page to move from a PR of 6 to a PR of 7, than it is
to move from a PR of 1 to PR of 2. (For more insights on how PageRank
works read ''.)
PageRank is used by Google to determine the
position of a page in the search results after a query. For example, if
you search for 'Italian Food', Google will first find all the pages
relevant to that topic, and then will rank them based on their PR.
Given equal relevance, those with a higher PR will be displayed first.
PageRank is a vital piece of statistics to
track the progress of your search engine optimization strategy. By
checking the PR of your pages frequently, you will be able to tell if
your SEO efforts are paying off.
Aside from utilizing PR to analyze your own
pages, you can also use it to determine the relative importance of other
web pages. This will come in handy when conducting a
. Since Google weigths the quality of the
pages linking to you very heavily, you want to solicit link exchanges
with pages that in turn have a high PageRank.
To be able to see the PageRank of a web
page, you have to download the Google toolbar, a free plug-in that works
with your web browser. The Google toolbar provides you with a PageRank
indicator that automatically shows you the PageRank of the page you are
viewing. This is how the PageRank indicator looks in the Google toolbar
(the yellow textbox that spells out the page's PR will pop up
automatically when you place your cursor over the green PR bar):
To download the Google Toolbar go to
.
To learn all about the Google Toolbar go
to:
To read Google's explanation of PageRank go
to .
About The Author
Mario Sanchez is a Miami based
freelance writer, who focuses on web design and Internet marketing
topics. He publishes The Internet Digest (
), a collection of web design and Internet marketing articles, tips
and resources. You can freely reprint his weekly articles in your
website, ezine, newsletter or ebook. |
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