SEO Optim Blog

A specific rank assigned to a particular website between the scale of 1-10 by Google is known as PageRank.  This PageRank is displayed in Google Toolbar (near to the Bookmark option).

Google PageRank’s Evolution:

Around 1990’, the search and the search results by Yahoo and some of the other search engines were based on keywords, and webmaster’s understood this and started to exploit the keyword factor.  What they used to do is stuff the websites with keywords (this is now considered to be spamming). Thus, the quality of search performed by search engines were not accurate.  Google entered search engine during this scenario and understood the extent of the problem.  Google knew that the webmaster’s ploy to stuff the keywords would jeopardize the accuracy and the quality of the search results and thus began to build an algorithm to overcome this problem.  The algorithm of Google shifted and changed the ranking system from on-page to off-page factors. The algorithm developed by Google is called as PageRank (named after Larry Page – one of Google’s founders). What the algorithm would do is that it will gauge the importance and the popularity of a website, and assign a rank between the scale of 1 to 10. The higher the PageRank a website has, the more weightage it will carry and positioned in the top search results of Google.

The PageRank algorithm was launched in 1998 and the results were immediately positive, the reputation of Google soared, internet users first choice of search engine became Google, and Google became the number one search engine in the world and is now the leader in search engine market.

Definition of PageRank given by Google:
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.

Google had made sure that nobody would be able to crack the algorithm to find exactly how the algorithm works and this is the secret behind Google’s achievement in search engine market.