What is Google PageRank?

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set.

Google PageRank is probably one of the most important algorithms ever developed for the Web. PageRank can improve your search engine ranking by 60%. It increases the impotance and popularity of your website. With billions of existing pages and millions of pages generated every day, the search issue in the Web is more complex than you probably think it is. PageRank, only one of hundreds of factors used by Google to determine best search results, helps to keep our search clean and efficient. But how is it actually done? How does Google PageRank work, which factors do have an impact on it and which don’t?

How Does Google PageRank Works?

• PageRank is only one of numerous methods Google uses to determine a page's relevance or importance.
• Also keep in mind that search engines crawl and index webpages not websites, that is why your page rank may vary from page to page within your website.
• Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B.
• PageRank is based on the value of your incoming links.
• Bad incoming links don’t have impact on Page Rank.
• PageRank evaluates two things: how many links there are to a web page from other pages, and the quality of the linking sites.
• PageRank is represented numerically from a low of PR0 to a rarely achieved high of PR10.
• Each Page Rank level is progressively harder to reach.
• Google updates page ranks of websites once every few months
• After a PR update is done, all pages are assigned a new PR by Google and you will have this PR until a new PR update is done.
• New sites that were just launched will have a PR of 0 until an update is done by Google so that they are assigned an appropriate PR.
• Crawlers don’t analyze web-sites permanently. It often takes two full monthly updates for all of your incoming links to be discovered, counted, calculated and displayed as backlinks.
• Page Rank can decrease. You can lose some important links that are no longer linking to your site.
• Links from and to high quality related sites are important. If pages linking to you have a high PageRank then your page gains some part of their reputation.
• To read Google's PageRank score one must download and install the Google Toolbar to look for page ranks of websites. The toolbar has a "PageRank meter".