What is Google’s PageRank and Why is it Important?

Well this is an easy question. Not only can we answer it easily and quickly but we can point you to a few tools that can help you measure the pagerank of any web site you view in your browser.

Google’s PageRank is a number from 0-9 that Google places on every web page in its database (a.k.a. “index”). The higher the number the more important Google thinks your web site is. In addition to 0 – 9, there is the additional ranking of n/a that means the page is not in Google’s index, either because it has not come across it yet,  Google thinks it’s not important enough to include, or it has been banned.  Here’s how Google explains it:

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. 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.”

Immediately following that answer the first thing clients want to know is “What’s my web site’s PageRank?” Ahh, how easily we miss the details. PageRank isn’t for web sites, it’s for individual pages. Well to find out what the PageRank (PR) of the pages that make up your web site and any web page you may be curious about you have a few options depending on which browser you’re using.

It matters not what web browser tool,  they’re add-ons  that measure PageRank of web pages and displays it using the web browser.  It should be easy to find those made by Google and third party ones that most consider better than Google’s own.

The second question everyone asks is “How can I improve my PageRank?” and/or “How is a page’s PageRank determined?” Well basically PR can be increased by increasing the number of websites that link to your website. Basically each of these counts as a vote. the higher the PR of the page that has a link to you and the less links they have on that page the more PR you’ll get.  PageRank is determined by a mathematical formula (an algorithm) that Google has patented.

And sometimes we get another question:

How important is PageRank?

To answer that we say there are a few different building blocks to search engine ranking success.  Your Link Profile is one of them.  Google PageRank is  Google’s measure of several factors, but overall it’s a great easy to use tool to measure  the strength of your Link Profile.