What is Google Page Rank?

This is a way that Google uses to show how important a webpage is. Google sees linking between websites as a vote casting process. The more links pointing to a website, the more the votes Google views been cast for that particular website and the higher the PR. You can view your page rank by using “Google toolbar” available at : http://www.toolbar.google.com. After installing it will be integrated with your browser and it will look something like this:

It is paramount to note that the website that are linking to you are also vetted for importance, the more PR they have the higher the value of the vote that you are going to get for your website.

Website A has more votes been cast for it from the 4 websites and it is also casting a vote for you by linking to you. Compare to the site below:

Website B has only 2 websites linking to them hence it will pass a lower valued vote to your website as compared to website A.

It is always vital to note that linking to site that are considered by Google as important, will increase your page rank as well. You can find this out by counting the number of links to that webpage AND the importance of those pages as viewed by Google.

How is Google Page Rank Calculated?

Most webmasters do not know how the Google PR is calculated, actually over 90%.

The question that was lingering in my mind when I was researching about PR was why is it important to funnel PR across all pages in your website? The webpage ranking will rise with the rise in PR.

Here is the Google PR Formula:-

0.15 + (0.85 *(“share” of the PR that links to your webpage)) = your Webpage PR

0.15 – Lowest Page Rank a website can have.

0.85 – Dampening Factor: a constant Google uses in calculating PR

“Share” – PR of a website linking to yours/ outbound links on that page(outgoing links)

Let’s look at an example below:

Assume we create a website with PR1 with 3 pages A, B and C. and also assume that there are not linking to any website either internally or externally.

Calculating now the page rank we are going to get:

0.15 + (0.85*0) = 0.15

The reason we are multiplying with 0 is because there is no “share” since we are not linking to any website. so at the end of the day each page in our website will have a 0.15 PR which is quite low.