Google Pagerank - 5 Things truths about Pagerank

Page rank is determined by an algorithm which simulates a person surfing the internet at random.  This surfer chooses randomly clicks on links.  If the random surfer clicks through 100 links or 1,000 links, what percentage of the time will that surfer be on your website?  If the random surfer is on your site more often, then you will have a higher page rank and your links will be more important.

#5 – PageRank rubs off on your outbound links

Since linking is democratic in nature, page rank is accurately seen as an indicator of authority.  Also, because linking is democratic in nature, the page rank from my website ‘rubs off’ on any website that I link to.  To better illustrate this, an example is in order.  If my site receives traffic of 100 visitors, and I have one outbound link, then the linked to page will receive slightly less than 100 visitors from me.  The get less visitors, because page rank assumes that people will eventually stop clicking.

Once again, thinking about the random surfer.  The potential traffic is split up between all out bound links.  If in the above example the page had 5 outbound links, we would expect the click through traffic to be slightly less than 20 per link.

#4 – PageRank is not the same throughout a website

Each individual page gets its own page rank.  While the homepage of the authoritative Open Source Directory Project may be page rank 8, the interior board game resources part of the directory that I edit is page rank 4.  This is important to know, because if you are looking to get high value links to your blog or website, you need to know the page rank of the interior page that the link will come from.

#3 – Easy ways to track PageRank exist

I found tracking page rank when I first started to care immensely time consuming.  I started out the way anybody would; I searched on Google for “how do I check pagerank”.  The top organic search result had a very useful but time consuming tool.  I had to type in the URL of the site I wanted to check, and then wait for the tool to load it.  Thankfully, I found an extremely helpful seo toolbar for Firefox which tracked the page rank automatically for me.  The toolbar also helps me keep track of other useful information like total incoming links, compete.com web traffic, and directory specific links.  Now as I am surfing the web on I can easily find pages that I want to get links from.

#2 – PageRank is on a logarithmic scale

This means that every increase in page rank is 10 times better than the previous one.  Page rank of 4 (PR4) is 10 times better than PR3 and PR5 is still 10 times better than PR4.  The importance of this is subtle but profound.  I found it so important that I repeated it to my poor wife like a mantra while we were on vacation.  A sample conversation:

“Erin, guess what?”
“Michael, is the about PageRank?”
“Ugh, no…”
…
“Umm, did you know that PR5 is 100 times better than PR3?”

Knowing this means that I know where I should allocate my resources in relation to link-building campaigns.  Let us assume a PR5 link takes 10 times longer to get than a PR3 link.  For any given PR5 link I could get, I could instead have 10 PR3 links.  However, the PR5 link is 10 times better than the all the PR3 links.  On a simplified basis, it is best to go after the easier to get high page rank links.  If you are submitting to a directory like DMOZ, Yahoo, or Best of the Web, then submit to the highest page rank category that applies.

#1 PageRank is not as important as it used to be

I know what you are thinking…

“All of this discussion as to why higher page rank links are good, and now the most important thing you know about page rank is that it is not as important as it used to be?  Why did I both reading this?”

Let me explain.  Page rank is the result of the Google algorithm which analyzes the link structure of the internet.  Years ago, this was some of the best data that Google had.  Fast forward to the summer of 2009 and now Google has access to significantly more information and more types of information.  Through their free Google toolbar and Google analytics, Google has direct traffic information and behavioral information.  This information may or may not be included in what Google uses to determine search results, but if I had access to it, I would be using it.

Also, remember that PageRank is a result of the linking structure and the random internet surfer.  I know I do not surf randomly, and most of us do not surf randomly.  While links show the intention of the webmasters and bloggers who post them, they do not represent the intentions of the surfer.  So while, I have read many search engine optimizers who say that page rank is irrelevant or close to irrelevant, I do disagree.

 One of the best ways to get search engine traffic is to have unique searchable content.  As you increase the unique searchable content that you have on your website or blog, you increase the chances of your website matching long tail search phrases.  I personally do not like to specifically target long tail search phrases.