Pawel Szulencki Search Engine Optimization/Marketing blog.
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The source of Google success is page ranking system called after Larry Page, Google PageRank™. It is a mathematical algorithm calculating the importance of a website according to many onsite and offsite factors.
Basically, a website that has more inbound links will be higher in search engine results page (SERP) than the same website with less sites linking to it. It is an idea taken from the science world, where the importance of publication is measured through the number of quoting in periodics. Placing a link to some website Google treats as some kind of vote for this site and gives it some significance. But weight and quality of a website also counts. It is known that a government website is more important than a personal home webpage. It is like that because government have power and right to publicize official announcements, changes to law, new tax systems and so on. Our home page can only refer and link to the above information’s.
That’s why a link from a site with bigger credibility and higher meaning weights more than couple or even some tens of links from an unknown pages with little or no importance. Logically it appears to use this system to prioritize sites on internet.
Google sorts websites according to 10 scale system, where 0 is site with no importance and 10 is a well known, credible website with many visitors and high traffic (very few websites have PageRank™ of 10).

Picture 1.
A humoristic picture showing how PageRank™ system works. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Google, by adding some new features to its algorithms gives higher importance to websites that are loner on the internet. In natural way these sites should possess some number of inbound links from other websites and some constant number of visitors. That’s why new websites get higher link weights than old sites to close the gap between them. New sites have no or very few inbound links and Google tries to make it equal to everyone by doing that. New sites can much easier get high listings in search engine results and high PageRank™ in the early phases of their existence. With time they usually lose their high positions and only then it is possible to determine what weight does the website really have.
It is not a good idea to buy a lot of links from a high PageRank™ websites to newly created web pages. Google assumes that such pages don’t have reach and developed content like sites that exist longer. It is common mistake while web optimization process. If link from a newly published website from a new web domain is added to numerous web directories and websites with high PageRank™ it is possible that such site will land in sandbox. Do not mistake sandbox with ban – a removal from indexes. Sandbox means lowered website PageRank™ and lower position in SERP, but is not equal to removal from indexing. Such site might still appear in SERP, but will lose its high positions for some or all keywords. The site will continuously be visited by Google web crawlers so don’t worry. After a while (from several weeks to several months) it will leave sandbox and be restored on full rights to search engine indexes.
However the trademark rights to PageRank™ system has Google Inc., the patent rights belong to Stanford University, where Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google studied.
Google itself describes PageRank™ as:
“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.”
If you want to read more about how Google PageRank™ algorithm works visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank where waits for you great article about technology that PageRank™ relies and was built on.
Full Google explanation of its ranking system can be viewed under this address:
http://www.google.com/technology/
Pawel Szulencki is a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Marketing certified specialist who is interested in organic SEO, paid campaigns (PPC) and Social Media Marketing channels. (Read more)
Bali Tours (1 comments.)
April 30th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
great information. thank you for sharing
Bali Tourss last blog post..Bali Rafting White Water Adventure
IT News (1 comments.)
April 30th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
The only problem is that Google also uses page rank to punish publishers that it doesn’t like for one reason or another. If you were a part of the John Chow posting for dollars movement, Google cut you down to nothing. And if a site steals your content and republishes and Google thinks your content isn’t the original, same thing. It’s a system that needs work for sure.
Emir
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Very insightful blog, but it relies on the primary understanding and theory of PageRank. I believe that this methodology of calculating page rank has drastically changed over the past 10 years. It involves millions of parameters that go much further than just backlinks; so many in fact that a single Google engineer is not even capable of understanding the whole algorithm. I happen to know one of those engineers
But to keep things simple, if you want a goot SE ranking, just add quality content… which is the case with this page as well.
Keep up the good work and thank you for the backlink
concrete ny (1 comments.)
May 3rd, 2009 at 6:39 am
how to increase pr??
diseño de logotipos (1 comments.)
May 4th, 2009 at 7:05 am
I´ve read that google pagerank can be faked by some piece of code, is this true?
BingoLive (1 comments.)
May 8th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Thanks for providing on Google page rank, it is very useful to me and i will work for my site accordingly.
MrzPerformance (1 comments.)
May 10th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Thanks that’s a great article.
Is it a good strategy to use 3 way linking to benefit the link popularity of their main site ?
Lithiummind (1 comments.)
May 13th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Great Article!!!
Pawel Szulencki (171 comments.)
May 16th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
@Emir: Google Page Rank is indeed very complex algorithm and you are right that a single engineer can not understand the whole algorithm.
Pawel Szulencki (171 comments.)
May 16th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
@concrete ny: Read more my blog and you’ll know many ways of increasing your PR
Pawel Szulencki (171 comments.)
May 16th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
@diseño de logotipos: I do not know it. But i think its not possible anyway.
Pawel Szulencki (171 comments.)
May 16th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
@MrzPerformance: The best way is to generate free one way links from related websites to yours. Other forms of link swapping or exchanging are not as powerful as one way, free link from related website.
Printing Wilmington NC (1 comments.)
May 24th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
When you say “Basically, a website that has more inbound links will be higher in search engine results page (SERP) than the same website with less sites linking to it.” - Does that mean it’s likely to help in general with SERP or only for searches of the specific anchor text.
Pawel Szulencki (171 comments.)
May 26th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
@Printing Wilmington NC: The number of domain links and the number of page links is always different. The number of domain links are links with all different anchor texts. Links with specific anchor text will help specific page to get higher in SERP’s. And the number of domain links with all different anchor texts will help in general the whole website to get higher results.
Hope it satisfies your question.
Paweł
koko tutorial(new comment)
June 13th, 2009 at 8:20 am
nice articel…..^_^
koko tutorial´s last blog ..Cek Popularitas Blog dengan URL Metrix
thisispopup(new comment)
June 13th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Google become tyrant with the pagerank. I don’t like when he decide website popular or not.
thisispopup´s last blog ..GridView Plugin For JQuery
SEO Services - Premium Link(new comment)
July 4th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
@diseño de logotipos for checking a fake page rank you should type “info:http://www…..//” on Google, and Google will tell you that it is fake or real.
Textbox(new comment)
July 27th, 2009 at 12:04 am
How many use PR as a benchmark of the effectiveness of their SEO campaign?
Raymund @ Pinoy Social Network(new comment)
August 8th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
This is a very detailed explanation of Page Rank! Now I understand it more
Wedding String Quartet(new comment)
August 16th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Good advice here. Does increasing the PR of a site increase it’s place in the rankings?
Max(new comment)
September 22nd, 2009 at 1:42 am
Just what I was looking for, thanks.
Max´s last blog ..Top 10 Web Hosting Companies
Water tanks(new comment)
November 5th, 2009 at 10:13 am
This is the right post what I am looking for so many days. Very informative and useful for me so that I can put the ideas in my blogging.
ste cruise(new comment)
November 12th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
The mysterious google page rank system….Does anybody really know exact details on how it works? It seems to change all the time and simply having links pointing at your site doesnt make any difference to your rankings unless the links are from the right source and have the right content around and in them.
Ste
Chrisile from SEM(new comment)
December 19th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Would anyone tell me which is more important? The page rank or the Alexa ranking?
faisu@ Workout Routine(new comment)
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:37 am
Google has given a great thing which is PR . And it’s really great post about PR . Thanks for sharing it. keep updating please ……