Pagerank: acting brand new

Late last year something went down in the SEO world, literally. It was big and if you are into net marketing you would have noticed it. The Google PageRank of large figure of publishers (gasp!), the ultimate navel gazing tool, took a big hit. Some dropped by two points and some by as much as 5. Should you care? Does it substance? And what is this PageRank business anyhow? Keep reading to find out.

PageRank is Google's view of the importance of this Page

Google Toolbar

I will offer a "brief" analysis of a slightly lengthy job. Not everybody got hit; just a large sufficiency percentage for the differences to be noticed. First I will define what PageRank is (hopefully in an interesting fashion), then I will review its use by net marketers and SEO practitioners.

To some people the news contained in this article is "highly" old news. Then again, in Jan Google updated their PageRank again, as they normally do every three calendar month -- so they are about due once again. It looks as if it is concern as usual in the Googleplex and there is little or no fear of another huge PR turbulence as there was in Nov of last year.

PageRank

PageRank is a patented algorithm written by Larry Page (Page-Rank). It is a hallmark registered to Google. It is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. According to Google "PageRank relies on the unambiguously democratic nature of the web by using its vast link construction as an index of an person page's value." In kernel, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links, a page receives; 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."

Another thing we should briefly look at is the fact that the PageRank that is most viewed (the green indicator on the toolbar) is an historical indicator that does not change in real time. Instead, it is updated about every three months. Therefore it is only representative of the real Google PageRank at that point in time. According to one blogger, PageRank is one of those things that everyone uses but nobody really understands.

I won't delve too deeply into the mathematics of the algorithm. Anyone who is interested in it should take a look at Wikipedia's page on it. However I will look at how SEO practitioners and Internet marketers used SEO in such a way as to turn PageRank into one of their marketing points, and how eventually it created a competing model against Google's pay-per-click ad model.