Never a day goes by
without people asking what is Page Rank, why is it so important and why
does everyone rave about it?
Well it used to be important, but as far as your position in the search
engines is concerned its importance has declined. It's easily possible to score highly on Google search rankings with little or no page-rank. As Google only
update page-rank two or three times a year, it can take some time to get a page-rank.
Page Rank is very
still useful for two reasons.
The mere fact that a site has a value means that Google has seen it,
understands it is there and has read it's content. Secondly when viewed on
sub-pages it shows that the structure of the site is allowing the spiders
to crawl effectively beyond the home page.
To explain Page Rank
you have to
grasp the difference between two specific elements, there is Page Point
Score (PPS) and Page Rank (PR), they are very different. Typically a
spidered page with no incoming links has a page point of 1 this equates to
a PR=0. Each link gives page points to the recipient page. The value of
how many points that migrate to the recipient page is based on the
originating page's points divided by the number of outgoing links on that
page. For example if a site has 11 pages, a homepage that links directly
to 10 other pages which all link back. PPS of 1 will be awarded to the 10
pages but the homepage having 10 incoming links (from PPS 1’s) will be
awarded 10 points. If the home page is linked to by another site with say
PR3 (512 PPS) then you can see how the calculations take on a whole
different perspective.
It should be noted
that just because you have a PR4 site pointing to your, the migrating PPS
is divided by the number of links on the sending page. So if the PR3
(512PPS) has 100 outgoing links the one that points to you will migrate
only ... 5 (512/100).
The number of PPS to
PR goes something like this; -
PR0 = 1 page point,
PR1 = 8 page points,
PR2 = 64 page points,
PR3 = 512 page points,
PR4 = 4096 page
points,
PR5 = 32768 page
points
PR6 = 262144 page
points,
PR7 = 2,097,152 page
points,
PR8 = 16,777,216 page
points,
PR9 = 134,217,728 page
points.
In
the quest for incoming links care should be taken, not all sites
especially those in frames and with dynamic content migrate PR. Any such
link is virtually worthless as far as optimisation is concerned. Some very
large well-known paper directories that have evolved on to the web are
good examples of this.
So back to the
question, why does everyone rave about Page Rank?
Because when there is a Google Page Rank update it is reassuring to know
that your effort has worked as expected and increased or better Page Rank
is one way you can see that the optimisation work has paid off. Be aware
though, that having a high Page Rank doesn't make your site score highly
for search terms, but sites that score well for search terms usually have
good Page Rank - there is a difference. |