What is Page Rank

[temi]

This question sounds quite basic to experienced webmasters, I have just helps two young webmasters with that same question at two different forums in the last few days hence I think its a good idea to post it here as a sticky.

You are welcomed to elaborate on my basic explanation if you like:

Ive never heard the term PR before can someone explain it to me. sorry if this is a really dumb question

PR, also know as Page Rank, is Google's way of measuring how important a website or web page is (this is a very simplified explanation, its much more complex than that).

PR is measured from PR0-PR10. See attached image for what PR look like, the attached is a PR6 site.

You need to have Google tool bar installed in your browser for PR to be displayed on your browser.

Thanks

 

[Gorkfu]

PR, also know as Page Rank, is Google's way of measuring how important a website or web page is

...... based on the quality of your incoming back links.

 

[clangallacher]

In short PageRank is a "vote", by all the other pages on the Web, about how important a page is.

A link to a page counts as a vote of support. If there's no link there's no support
(but it's an abstention from voting rather than a vote against the page).

 

[thinkfast]

PR like a dress code of your site.

Because after saw PR any one can take decision about importance of site.

 

[zurk]

PR stands for the popularity of website/page (based on IBL)

 

[KingPin36]

PR = Pointless Rank.

Bah! Don't get me started

KP

 

[pow-wow]

PageRank is only part of a Algorithm, based off of backlinks. Its an indicator of a sites worth, but doesn't govern Search Engine rankings.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Page rank is a mathematical value of the importance of a page according to Google, based on its position within the Google link map of the internet.

All links in the map carry weight, and that weight can compound in value as they pass through the more important pages (a higher PageRanked page).

 

[arora]

Page rank is as follows:

where p1,p2,...,pN are the pages under consideration, M(pi) is the set of pages that link to pi, L(pj) is the number of outbound links on page pj, and N is the total number of pages.

 

[sums123]

School Report card

It's just like a school report Card.

High PR means very good site good content and quality backlinks.

Low PR means site needs lot of improvement and not considered to be of quality site from the eyes of google.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

It's just like a school report Card.

High PR means very good site good content and quality backlinks.

Low PR means site needs lot of improvement and not considered to be of quality site from the eyes of google.

1. content has absolutely nothingto do with PR.

2. it could be argued that it is sen as not a very IMPORTANT site in the eyes of the web, rather than google. PR is just the result of links, google links don't count, so it is the result of what OTHER people think.

 

[MarkeD]

PageRank is an indicator of how connected with the rest of the web your webpage is. High PR sites are more likely to be found via random clicks on hyperlinks than low PR sites. It factors into ranking in Google but by no means is the be all and end all.

Its a nice anology to think of PR as a measure of flow around the web (PR 'juice') - high PR sites have lots of backlinks, although not all backlinks are equal. If for example a website had only one link from a PR10 site (not going to happen ) then they would have more PR than 100 links from PR4 sites. The PR10 site flows more 'juice' into a page. Nofollow tags interrupt the PR juice flow.

The PR scale is roughly logarithmic; eg. 100 PR10 sites, 1000 PR9 sites, 10,000 PR8 sites etc.

 

[A. Williams]

page rank is nothing but the points given by google to the web page.....

 

[Joaquin]

Page Rank calculation is Google’s way of deciding relative importance of a webpage. PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page’s importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page’s PageRank is calculated. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page’s ranking in the search results. It isn’t the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one. Source: Google’s PageRank explained and how to make the most of it

 

[scfc16]

Page rank is how your site rates on the search engines.

 

[KingPin36]

Page rank is how your site rates on the search engines.

Wrong.

PageRank has nothing to do with rankings.

KP

 

[Gorkfu]

Not to go off topic or anything, but I would recommend to mods to close some topics that have already been given fantastic answers. I'm getting a wee tired of seeing repetitive responses. I think some new members don't actually read through the entire thread when they are looking to help. It's great that they are helping, but redundancy is a bit annoying. Just a thought.

 

[Andyrose]

Page Rank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. Page Rank is Google's way of deciding a page's importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page's ranking in the search results.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

don't confuse 'importance' with 'relevance'. different things entirely

 

[Arleigh]

I disagree with this. Having a higher PR is not based on how good your content is. That's because PR is based on how many backlinks your site has. So you can still have higher page rank even though your site doesn't have good content as long as you build more links for your site.

It's just like a school report Card.

High PR means very good site good content and quality backlinks.

Low PR means site needs lot of improvement and not considered to be of quality site from the eyes of google.