PageRank is a numerical value (from 0 to 10) that Google assigns to a website or webpage to indicate its relative importance on the Internet as a whole. The PageRank value of a website or webpage is calculated by Google using its proprietary PageRank algorithm.
PageRank as Defined by Google
The following is an excerpt from a page on Google.com that existed previously, but has now been removed:
Google runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware and software. The speed you experience can be attributed in part to the efficiency of our search algorithm and partly to the thousands of low cost PC’s we’ve networked together to create a superfast search engine.
The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. And while we have dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to play a central role in many of our web search tools.
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.
Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.
To learn more about the intricacies of the Google PageRank algorithm, you can read the original paper that Google founders Larry Page (after whom “PageRank” was named) and Sergey Brin submitted to Stanford. The paper is entitled “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.”
Possible PageRank Values
Possible PageRank values range from 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest possible PageRank. Google.com is currently PageRank 9. Sometimes, you may see a website with an “unknown” or “N/A” (not applicable) PageRank value. A PR N/A or unknown value typically indicates one of the following two possibilities:
- The website is fairly new (or the domain name was recently registered) and Google has not yet assigned a PageRank value to it, or;
- The website has been deindexed or removed from the Google search engine results (typically) as penalty for failing to comply with the Google webmaster or website quality guidelines.
If it is the former (new website or domain name), you do not have to do anything, other than to continue building your website and publishing content that complies with the Google webmaster and website quality guidelines. If it is the latter (your website has been deindexed), you must figure out the specific Google guidelines that your website violated, correct these violations, and then submit a request for reinclusion in the Google search results.
How to Check PageRank
Rank Checker provides two tools that enable you to check the Google PR of your website and to validate if that PR is real or fake: