PageRank is all about Google, the most familiar brand in the world wide web.
As you know, Google is the world's top search engine, and is used by over 90% of internet users all over the world for search purposes. Other top search engines are Yahoo and Bing, which have small shares of around 3-5%.
So if you own a site, you have to rely on Google for traffic, unless you expect direct traffic, which is possible only if your site is so popular that users directly enter your site, or if your site is related to something like a local business which doesn't really need global exposure.
For getting traffic from Google, you have to do some really good SEO(Search Engine Optimization) on your site, which will help your site get higher positioning in search engine results.
Defining PageRank:
Basically, PageRank is a numeric value, between 1 and 10, that defines the importance of a web page. It is one of the many factors(and most likely, very important) that determines how a web page appears in Google search results.
According to Page and Brin's theory, the most important pages on the Internet are the pages with the most links leading to them. These links are taken as votes, where a page linking to another page is casting a vote.
And this does make sense, because people do tend to link to relevant content, and pages with more links to them are usually better resources than pages that nobody links.
This system also looks at the importance of the page that contains the link. Pages with higher PageRank have more weight in "voting" with their links than pages with lower PageRank. It also looks at the number of links on the page casting the "vote." Pages with more links have less weight.
This also makes a certain amount of sense. Pages that are important are probably better authorities in leading web surfers to better sources, and pages that have more links are likely to be less discriminating on where they're linking.
This can be understood very well if we take a simple real life example. Suppose Mr. X praises everyone he knows, so we don't really care whom he praises. But if Mr. Y is of opposite character, and doesn't really praise many people, only 2 or 3, then we may think that those 2 or 3 people are worth praising.
How Important is PageRank?
PageRank is one of many factors that determines where your web page appears in search result ranking, but if all other factors are equal, PageRank can have significant impact on your Google rankings.
From my personal experience I can say, PageRank doesn't really matter a lot for getting good organic traffic(traffic from search engines), but still, it is considered important by SEO gurus.
So basically a web page with PageRank 1 can have much more organic traffic than one with PageRank 3.
It all depends how much search engines love your site.
PageRank History:
PageRank was developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford. In the beginning, search engines typically linked to pages that had the highest keyword density, which meant people could game the system and manipulate results by repeating the same phrase over and over to attract higher search page results.
PageRank is patented by Stanford, and the name PageRank likely comes from Larry Page.
PageRank Algorithm is a mystery!
Now, I would like to tell you, Google's PageRank calculation algorithm is actually a mystery, no one really knows how Google determines PageRanks of web pages. There are various theories regarding the algorithm, most being assumptions, and we take into account only those which seem most probable from our experience.
Few top PageRank web pages(as of Jan 2011):
There are many more PR 10, PR 9, etc pages, but all need not be listed here.
Very few pages have PR 10, and the number of pages with a particular PR increases as we go down the table from 10 to 1. So PR 1 category consists of the most number of pages. This does not follow any particular order though.
As you know, Google is the world's top search engine, and is used by over 90% of internet users all over the world for search purposes. Other top search engines are Yahoo and Bing, which have small shares of around 3-5%.
So if you own a site, you have to rely on Google for traffic, unless you expect direct traffic, which is possible only if your site is so popular that users directly enter your site, or if your site is related to something like a local business which doesn't really need global exposure.
For getting traffic from Google, you have to do some really good SEO(Search Engine Optimization) on your site, which will help your site get higher positioning in search engine results.
Defining PageRank:
Basically, PageRank is a numeric value, between 1 and 10, that defines the importance of a web page. It is one of the many factors(and most likely, very important) that determines how a web page appears in Google search results.
According to Page and Brin's theory, the most important pages on the Internet are the pages with the most links leading to them. These links are taken as votes, where a page linking to another page is casting a vote.
And this does make sense, because people do tend to link to relevant content, and pages with more links to them are usually better resources than pages that nobody links.
This system also looks at the importance of the page that contains the link. Pages with higher PageRank have more weight in "voting" with their links than pages with lower PageRank. It also looks at the number of links on the page casting the "vote." Pages with more links have less weight.
This also makes a certain amount of sense. Pages that are important are probably better authorities in leading web surfers to better sources, and pages that have more links are likely to be less discriminating on where they're linking.
This can be understood very well if we take a simple real life example. Suppose Mr. X praises everyone he knows, so we don't really care whom he praises. But if Mr. Y is of opposite character, and doesn't really praise many people, only 2 or 3, then we may think that those 2 or 3 people are worth praising.
How Important is PageRank?
PageRank is one of many factors that determines where your web page appears in search result ranking, but if all other factors are equal, PageRank can have significant impact on your Google rankings.
From my personal experience I can say, PageRank doesn't really matter a lot for getting good organic traffic(traffic from search engines), but still, it is considered important by SEO gurus.
So basically a web page with PageRank 1 can have much more organic traffic than one with PageRank 3.
It all depends how much search engines love your site.
PageRank History:
PageRank was developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford. In the beginning, search engines typically linked to pages that had the highest keyword density, which meant people could game the system and manipulate results by repeating the same phrase over and over to attract higher search page results.
PageRank is patented by Stanford, and the name PageRank likely comes from Larry Page.
PageRank Algorithm is a mystery!
Now, I would like to tell you, Google's PageRank calculation algorithm is actually a mystery, no one really knows how Google determines PageRanks of web pages. There are various theories regarding the algorithm, most being assumptions, and we take into account only those which seem most probable from our experience.
Common misunderstandings regarding PageRank:
Very often, PageRank is mistaken to be all about a domain. But its just a false assumption. PageRank is not given to a particular domain. Its given to web pages. So, different pages under the same domain name can have different PageRanks.
For example, for a domain yoursite.com, the page http://www.yoursite.com/ can be PR 3, and at the same time, another page http://www.yoursite.com/aboutus.html can be PR 0 or 1 or anything between 0 and 10.
Flaws in PageRank:
There are few flaws in this PR system. And they have been misused time to time for manipulating search engine results.
Few methods of PageRank manipulation are Google Bombs and Link Farming.
A Google bomb occurs when a group of people conspire to artificially elevate a web site in Google's web search results ranking by linking a particular word or phrase to the website.
Link farming is the practice of linking without thought of the relevance of the pages being linked, and it is often automated.
Google has adapted itself to these techniques by tweaking their formula and filtering off possible link farms.
If you find your website appearing in a link farm, no need to worry, you've got no control on what others link to. Just make sure you never link to a link farm.
How to check PageRank?
To find the PageRank of a page, use Google Toolbar.
Plus, there are many sites where you can enter a webpage url to check its PageRank.
Plus, there are many sites where you can enter a webpage url to check its PageRank.
There are many more PR 10, PR 9, etc pages, but all need not be listed here.
Very few pages have PR 10, and the number of pages with a particular PR increases as we go down the table from 10 to 1. So PR 1 category consists of the most number of pages. This does not follow any particular order though.
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