Google and its Page Rank

The search engine Google has transformed search as we know and it all started with its Page Rank formula. The idea was to give each page a value based on other sites linking to that page, the better the quality and quantity of links the higher the page rank. But as a page increases it own page rank and page that is linked to from it, also gain from that high page rank value.

The results have meant that many SEO amateurs and professional have taken page rank as the be all and end all of linking strategies, meaning that they would prefer to receive a link from a site that had a high page rank rather than one that was relevant to the site and helped its readers.

You can tell what page rank a webpage has by installing the Google toolbar and in options selection the relevant tick box option. Every time you browse a page you will see a green bar on the Google toolbar that will give an indication of that particular page’s page rank, but it is not quite what it seems. First of all the result you see (out of 10) is not live and in fact is just a snap shot of sometime ago. Just this weekend much of the UK has seen their toolbars update at what appears to be a page rank update but in fact even these new results are still probably a snapshot sometime a few weeks ago.

The next point is even though we see page rank as a score out of 10, it is very likely that Google has a more accurate scoring system, so it could be out of 1000 or broken down into decimal points. Even with all this inaccuracy it is amazing how much SEO work and money changes hands based on these scores on the page rank bar.

Google tells you not to worry about things like this and only do things that help your visitor. This is a true fact but in highly competitive fields chances are you will have to do both. Ensure you have a compelling unique site for your visitors and find away to get relevant and high page rank sites to link to you. My advice is to aware of what page rank is and how it can help in SEO, but don’t let it rule everything you do. You may find little results.