There’s been a lot of talk about Google PageRank value, as well as a lot of misinformation.
First, the basics. Google’s assigns a PageRank to URLs within its index. This PageRank value is determined by the number and quality of links Google can find that point to the given URL. You can check a site’s PageRank by downloading the Google Toolbar, or with some of the many free PageRank tools like this one.
New pages are generally unranked for several weeks or longer. PageRank is most commonly referred to on a scale of 0-10, but the actual number Google comes up with can be in the thousands, or millions. The 0-10 scale, which PR-checker tools all use to display PageRank, is on a logarithmic scale. Thus, a site with a PR of 6 is not twice as “popular” as a site with a PR of 3 - it’s actually four or five times more popular.
There are complicated formulas some SEOs have used to calculate “true” PageRank, but everyone just refers to it on the 0-10 scale. Just know that this scale is not exact, so two sites can show a PageRank of 1 but one will have a higher “true” PR than the other. An additional factor to consider is that Google has traditionally only performed “visible” PageRank updates on a quarterly basis (though more frequently in 2008).
PageRank was, in my opinion, a Google marketing strategy. It was a pretty brilliant move, because business owners started asking, “What’s our PageRank?” Suddenly, search engine marketing became about getting a good PR, and getting links from pages with high PR (when a page links out to you, some of their PageRank is transferred to your page). When Google became popular, the term “just google it” came to mean “just search it,” and this is what they’ve done with PageRank.
PageRank is just another part of the total Google ranking formula, but when they gave a name to it, people stopped asking, “Where does your site list in the major search engines for your keyword terms?” They started asking, “What’s my Google PageRank?” In this way, Google has somewhat successfully shifted the focus from optimization for all search engines to a single minded focus on attaining a high PageRank.
It’s great to have a site with a high PR. It typically means that Google will visit your site more frequently, index its changes, and rank it higher in searches.
However, PageRank is only part of the total picture. In fact, you will often discover that top results have a lower PR than lower search results. In fact, there is a general consensus within the SEO community that PageRank is playing less and less a part in Google’s ranking algorithm, and Matt Cutts of Google has openly stated that the search engine has begun stripping the ability of some sites to pass it through links, due to abuse. In addition, there are a number of other factors that determine a site’s trust and link authority, like TrustRank, an important factor you’ll never hear fly-by-night/spam SEOs talk about.
It is important to have relevant, quality sites linking to you, and it is important to have good, search-engined optimized content. PageRank is fun and glitzy, but nearly irrelevant to a successful SEO campaign. Focus on building quality links, and you may well end up with high PR - but at the end of the day, it is only your placement in search results that matters.
