What Is PageRank?

Date First Published: 1st November 2022

Topic: Web Design & Development

Subtopic: SEO

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Medium

Difficulty Level: 5/10

CONTENTS

What Factors Determine PageRank?
Manipulation

Learn more about what PageRank is in this article.

PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google to rank pages and measure their value, importance, and authority to determine the order search results from webpages competing for the same keywords are displayed. It was developed by Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1996 and officially released and first used in 1998. It is believed that PageRank assigns a numerical score of importance or authority to a page on the World Wide Web, from 0 to 10, with a PageRank score of 0 indicating a low-authority page and a PageRank score of 10 indicating a high-authority page. Experts believe that the number is not a single integer, but goes to a number of decimals. The belief comes from the Google Toolbar, which will display the PageRank of a page as a number between 0 and 10.

What Factors Determine PageRank?

Google's exact algorithms are not disclosed. However, certain factors have been confirmed. The known factors that determine PageRank include:

Whether the searcher's query matches the title and description of the page. Keywords matched in the domain name and parts of the URL, such as the directory and filename are believed to be a factor in determining the relevance to the searcher’s query. This is the most important factor that determines the position of indexed pages.
The quality and number of backlinks pointing to a page. The more backlinks a page has, the higher the chances of it ranking higher in the SERP. This is one of the biggest off-page SEO factors that determines the order that pages are listed in Google Search. PageRank does not only measure the number of backlinks pointing to a page. It also measures the quality of the backlinks, which is determined by the authority of the linking domain, trust relevance, HTTP status, crawlability, and quality. The authority that a backlink passes onto another website is known as link juice.
How fast the webpage loads. Google has been using page speed as a ranking factor as it wants to show pages that deliver a good user experience. If Google indexed two pages with similar content on different websites which had approximately the same quantity and quality of backlinks, the faster of those two would rank higher.
Whether the webpage is mobile-friendly.
Whether the webpage uses SSL/TLS with the padlock. Security is a priority for Google and HTTPS over SSL/TLS has been announced as a ranking signal by Google.
Whether the content is unique from other websites and not plagiarised or duplicate.

Manipulation

Some people try to artificially manipulate the PageRank algorithm using black-hat SEO techniques which are against Google’s webmaster guidelines, such as link schemes, keyword stuffing, doorway pages, cloaking, article spinning, and duplicate content.

Engaging in these SEO techniques can result in a Google penalty, causing websites to be lowered or even completely deindexed from the SERP. Google has warned webmasters that if they are caught selling links to manipulate PageRank, their links will be devalued.

However, over time, Google’s algorithms have developed to detect attempts to artificially manipulate PageRank and prevent the pages from getting higher in the search results. An example of this is the Google Florida Update (released in November 2003), Google Panda update (released in February 2011), and Google Hummingbird update (released in August 2013). These updates were changes in algorithms intended to penalise or ban sites that keyword stuff.