There are those
in our industry who will tell you that PageRank is dead.
I've been reading a lot lately about how we are supposed
to ignore the green bar in our browser but you know
what? I disagree and I'm going to tell you why.
For those who don't know, PageRank is Google's way of
determining a website's worth based on the number of
incoming links it has. In other words, Google
counts the number of links pointing to a site as votes,
generally speaking the more votes a site has the more
it is likely worth to Google.
While this is a simplistic view of PageRank and it has
indeed gotten much more complex than this, in essence
this is what PageRank is. So why would many think
it's not worth anything?
Because at one time, Google s ranking algorithms were
based in large part on the PageRank calculations.
Too soon, however, webmasters realized that in order
to get high rankings, all you needed was a bunch of
links. Google caught on however, and adjusted
the algorithms to ensure that only relevant links were
counted.
But what makes up a relevant link? Well, look
at a website from a searchers point of view. If
I am the owner of a website and I'm going to link to
other sites, do I want to link to a bunch of unrelated
sites that provide no added value to my site's visitors?
The answer should be no.
Therefore I want to provide links to relevant related
sites which are a benefit to my site s visitors.
This is the strategy Google is employing to attempt
to determine the relevancy of links. The links
should be related and/or relevant to the site they are
linking to.
While there s a ton of programming and logic involved,
this is essentially what the new PageRank
does - it devalues those links that are unrelated or
non-relevant to the site to which they link.
So, now that I've provided this brief introduction,
lets get back to the original question is
PageRank dead? Should we ignore the green bar
in our browser? The simple answer is no. (FYI,
if you don't have the Google Toolbar, you can get it
here. http://toolbar.google.com/
While PageRank
has been devalued somewhat by Google it is still the
essential algorithm Google uses on their index.
While it is true that PageRank is not the ultimate ranking
algorithm anymore, it still contributes to rank.
Therefore you will see sites with a low PageRank value
outranking other sites. But this is due more to
the site itself than the number of links (Go figure
- Google is trying to return relevant results regardless
of how many links you have).
In any case, the results you see on Google are better
than they once were and less susceptible to influence
by aggressive search engine optimizers. But that
s not to say that PageRank is dead. Far from it.
To really understand the effect of PageRank, one must
understand how Google works.
Google has thousands of interlinked computers inside
their data centers. Each computer has a job.
Some calculate PageRank, some count links, some serve
results when queries are performed.
When a site is indexed by Google, it goes into the database
where the algorithms are applied and values assigned.
When a query is performed, the database is checked and
all the sites which match the query are shortlisted.
Then each server is then told to return only the top
results (it may be top 3, it may be top 10, we don't
know). And guess which factor determines which
top results are returned? You guessed it
PageRank. So if your site is on a cluster which
has a bunch of higher PageRank sites, then there s a
pretty good chance that it won't make it to that next
level of processing.
It is at this next level where PageRank is devalued
and the pages are sorted based on other factors to ensure
they better match the query. They are then returned
to the searcher in the order Google deems more appropriate
to the query. All this happens in a split second.
Another place where PageRank is extremely helpful is
link building.
As any good search engine optimizer knows, links are
still important. It should seem pretty obvious
throughout this article that links are what drives your
ranking. All engines use some form of link popularity
to determine rankings, not just Google.
So when you do link building, PageRank can be a great
indicator of the value of a link. Remember, if
you are doing link building, you are first going to
want to find useful links and ones that are of a value
to your website's visitors. But you can consider
PageRank when searching out these links. Because
a site with a higher PageRank will contribute more to
your link popularity than one with a lower PageRank.
This comes with a caveat, however, and that is that
no one except Google knows how accurate the PageRank
displayed in the Google Toolbar is. It is only
updated occasionally, so the true PageRank can be different
than what you see.
That's why I mentioned above to use the PageRank as
an indicator of the links value, and not the sole criteria
when evaluating what sites you want links from.
But as you can probably guess from the tone of this
article, while the PageRank value you see may be flawed,
it is most certainly in use by Google.
About
the author:
Rob Sullivan - SEO Specialist and Internet Marketing
Consultant. Any reproduction of this article needs to
have an html link pointing to http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/ |
