 PageRank is Google's measure of importance assigned to a web page on a scale of 1 to 10. You can check the PageRank value of any page by downloading the Google Toolbar.
This article is intended at understanding PageRank and providing an insight into its different aspects.
History of Site Ranking
In the early 1990's when the web was emerging, several sites having industry specific content were being added to the web each day. Web surfers, on the other hand, had very few tools to locate such sites, which they believed were out there but did not have a clue about their domain names or web addresses. With the birth of Yahoo in 1993 , surfers were offered some relief. Yahoo classified each site it discovered in a neatly organized directory list and also embedded a search engine in its site to search for sites based on ‘keywords' existing in its database. Several other search engines like AltaVista, Excite, Lycos etc. followed the search trends offering site search facilities to users. Most of these search engines relied heavily on Meta Tags to classify the relevance of websites based on the keywords they found in the tags.
Things seemed to work out fine before site owners and webmasters realized the value of how they can ‘embed' industry specific keyword phrases in their Meta Tags and other site code, thus manipulating their way to show up higher in search results. Over a period of time, search engine results started getting cluttered with sites that spammed their content with relevant keywords but had poor site content for the visitor. The very essence, credibility and importance of search engines was now being challenged to deal with how they could offer a more refined search output to their users.
Emergence of Google PageRank
Google realized the problem conventional search engines faced in dealing with this situation. If the control of relevance remained with the webmasters, the ranking results would remain contaminated with sites artificially inflating their keyword relevance.
Web, by its very nature is based on hyperlinks, where sites link to other prominent sites. If you take the logic that you would tend to link to sites that you consider important, in essence, you are casting a vote in favor of the sites that you link to. When hundreds or thousands of sites link to a site, it is logical to assume that such a site would be good and important.
Taking this logic further the Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page formulated a Search Engine algorithm that shifted the ranking weight to off-page factors. They evolved a formula called PageRank (named after its founder Larry Page) where the algorithm would count the number of sites that link to a page and assign it an importance score on a scale of 1-10. More the number of sites that link to a page, higher its PageRank.
Note: The scale of 1-10 on Google is not linear. It is exponential in nature, believed to be a base of 6 to 7, that is, PR 7 website is 6 times more important than PR 6 website.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page deployed their PageRank algorithm with the launch of Google in 1998 . The result was a grand success. Google surpassed its competition by serving superior and relevant results using a formula that was difficult to manipulate. This new algorithm not only helped in providing authentic and quality information, but also made it very difficult for site owners and webmasters to cheat their way to a top rank.
Google's PageRank is important because it is one of the primary off-page factors that influences your page's ranking in the search engine result pages.
PageRank in Google's own Words
Google explains PageRank as follows (http://www.google.com/technology/):
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.
For more information on Google PageRank, go to
http://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html
http://www.google.com/technology/
About the Author:
Harjot Kaleka is a Copywriter at RedAlkemi, a leading Internet Marketing, eCommerce, Graphic Design, Web & Software Development services company. She has a Masters Degree in Mass Communications and Copywriting.
Author : External source , Read 2675 times, Comments: 0| Rating : |   | | Saturday, 3. December 2005 |
Add new comment/Comments
| Your rating : Poor Excellent |
  Are your scripts homeless? NetBulge.com is devoted to web development. If you are too, then this is the site to house your best scripts and articles. Think about it: exposure, knowledge sharing and free rent.
Join us!
Featured * The Notepad on steroids. Quickness and simplicity, the Notepad’s two most acclaimed features are the core of this little editor; except Notepad2 goes the extra mile to provide syntax highlighting, brace matching, auto indent, rectangular selection, etc. With this tool around, there is no reason to have the original Notepad on your PC. (Source code available) An outstanding compilation of some of the best Flash sites out there. As usual with Flash sites, most are useless elaborated animations, but nevertheless worthwhile having a look. http://www.greg.ch/flash/ | 
45%