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What is PageRank?
Google PageRank used to be a prominent SEO metric. As an algorithmic system developed by Google, PageRank was used for link analysis. Google used it to rank webpages in its SERP, and an increase in page rank effectively demonstrated that your SEO strategy was working.
Fast forward to today, PageRank is rarely mentioned. It is not because it has no relevance in search engine optimization but because it is not a public-facing metric. PageRank assigns a numeric page rank score to each webpage. Webpages with more links from other high-quality pages have a higher PageRank. Higher scores indicate greater authority and influence.
PageRank – A Webpage Ranking System
As a webpage ranking system, PageRank uses probability distribution for all the web pages on a particular website. Here is how the PageRank algorithm works:
- Each webpage is assigned an equal and normalized value of PageRank based on the number of pages.
- The algorithm then iteratively calculates the PageRank score for each webpage based on the incoming links from other web pages. A webpage’s score is influenced by the number and quality of incoming links it receives.
- PageRank scores from incoming links are divided among the linked webpages. The more outgoing links a webpage has, the less page rank it passes to each linked page, ensuring page rank flows through the website without being overly diluted.
- The calculation and weighting steps are repeated multiple times to refine the PageRank scores, called iteration. Each iteration allows the algorithm to converge towards more accurate and representative scores.
- Lastly, the iterations continue until the PageRank scores stabilize, indicating that the distribution process has reached a point where further iterations yield negligible changes.
The algorithm assigns a score to each webpage, considering factors such as the quality and relevance of backlinks.
The PageRank Score
The original paper titled “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine”, published by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page in January 1999, explained that PageRank was a method to “bring order to the web” by distributing weights across pages.
The PageRank algorithm gives PageRank scores to webpages based on the probability that a random user clicking on a link will arrive at a certain webpage. The score is determined by a logarithmic scale between 0 and 10, where 10 is the most trustworthy web source for a certain query.
A Brief History of Google Page Rank
For years, PageRank was a vital web page ranking system employed by Google Search.
Google PageRank was developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google, in 1999 while they were at Stanford. They believed that “To engineer a search engine is a challenging task” and that PageRank would immensely help improve the primary task of improving the quality of web search engines.
In 2000, Google allowed you to see the PageRank score of any website on the browser toolbar, but it had to remove the same in 2016 due to PageRank Sculpting, a form of PageRank manipulation.
How PageRank Works
PageRank calculates the probability distribution based on outside links pointing to a webpage.
The original formula proposed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin is as follows:
“The PageRank of a page A, PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn)).”
Where we assume page A has pages T1…Tn which point to it (i.e., are citations) and –
- d = a damping factor (which can be set between 0 and 1, usually set to 0.85).
- C(A) is the number of links going out of page A.
The PageRanks form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all pages’ PageRanks will be one.
The Launch of the Google Toolbar
After publishing their paper in which they named their search engine ‘Google’, Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched the Google toolbar in 2000.
The Google Toolbar included a green bar as a PageRank indicator for each webpage. It allowed webmasters and SEO professionals to check the page rank of any webpage and see how it valued links pointing to a webpage, eventually leading to PageRank Sculpting.
SEOs started focusing on getting as many links as possible from higher-ranking web pages. With money getting involved, Google found that links were placed in bulk and in unnatural locations, which did not translate into a good SEO strategy.
An Updated PageRank Patent
In the original patent in 1998, the underlying assumption was that the number and quality of links from other pages determine a page’s importance. And it was mostly true, but to think that Google uses the same PageRank algorithm is a bit outdated, as confirmed by an ex-Google employee. It turns out, Google hasn’t used the original PageRank algorithm since 2006. The original patent expired in 2018 but was seemingly replaced by a new one in 2006.
The patent doesn’t talk about PageRank but follows a similar idea, focusing more on the usefulness of a webpage.
Factors That Influence(d) PageRank and Still Matter
Previously, website owners followed the SEO strategy to rope in more links from other trustworthy webpages.
Links point to a webpage with relevant and trustworthy information. It was the most important factor influencing page rank, which still matters along with anchor texts.
Google’s new patent aims to create informational hubs with the help of seed sites, and “[Seed sites] need to be reliable, diverse enough to cover a wide range of fields of public interests and well-connected to other sites. They should have many useful outgoing links to identify other useful and high-quality pages, acting as ‘hubs’ on the web.”
Anchor Text
An anchor text is a text that anchors the link. In its original paper, Google states that it uses link structure and anchor text. Google also considers the page it points to as it provides “more accurate descriptions of web pages than the pages themselves.”
The Probability of a Link Being Clicked
The probability of a link being clicked also influences the PageRank score. A link is often associated with an anchor text, and for any user to click on a link, it must provide a contextual value to the page and the user.
Internal Links and No Follow Links
Google Search Engine ignores the internal links within the website pages, i.e. one page pointing to other pages on the same website.
The Google PageRank algorithm is about the probability distribution of links pointing to a webpage. In that formula, Google doesn’t factor in the links from the same website, as is clear from the above formula. A common practice is to use No Follow Links (rel= “nofollow”) on internal links while using any internal link on a webpage. It allows the Google crawler to ignore that link while indexing the webpage.
What Caused Google to Discontinue the PageRank Toolbar?
Google launched the PageRank toolbar in 2000 as a browser extension. It allowed people to see the PageRank score of any webpage on the browser itself in the form of a green bar. This brought an unwarranted fixation amongst webmasters and SEOs.
The website owners started using an unpractical Link Building Strategy to get as many links from high-ranking webpages as possible. Buying backlinks became a common and accepted SEO practice amongst website owners, often leading to links pointing to non-value pages and spamming. After 15 long years, Google removed the PageRank Toolbar for good.
Why PageRank is Still Important?
PageRank played a significant role in determining the ranking of web pages. Google ranked the webpages higher in the search order that it thought valuable, determined by the number of links pointing to them. And it made sense.
The underlying principle is that if you have good content, more websites in the same domain would like to point to your content. Now, Google provides ranking scores to web pages based on various factors, including the quality and relevance of the content, user behavior signals, and the search query’s context.
Is There a PageRank Metric That Can Replace PageRank?
Google has been using PageRank for the last 23 years in different forms. However, it does not provide official software to check the page rank. Other metrics, such as “domain authority score”, can be used to determine how good a website is and how valuable a backlink from such a website would be.
For example, Wikipedia is very popular; many websites point to its content. You will find that it has good domain authority too. While it cannot replace PageRank, it can give you an idea about a website.
Conclusion
The PageRank algorithm is named after the term “web page” and the name of the founder Larry Page, and it assigns a numerical score, known as the PageRank score, to each webpage based on the number of links pointing to it.
However sophisticated, the PageRank algorithm is pretty efficient in ranking web pages on the Google Search Engine. It assigns a numeric PageRank score to webpages based on many factors and is primarily influenced by the quality and quantity of links pointing to a specific webpage.
