Page Rank & How to Improve it

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The Google PageRank (GPR) is a score between zero and 10 (zero being the lowest and 10 the highest) that Google awards to every web page it references. A web page’s GPR is an indication of how important Google assesses it is in relation to all other websites. The GPR can be seen within the Google toolbar in your browser for every web page you visit, if you do not have the Google toolbar this can be downloaded from the Google website.


A good ranking means that your website will rank higher in the search engine’s natural results. For example when a user searches for ‘couriers London’ Google finds all of the relevant websites (based on keywords etc.) then it must list them in order of importance and this is based on page ranking. Ultimately the higher its page ranking, the higher that website’s position on a natural search will be.

Google ranks web pages’ using the GPR algorithm. The GPR algorithm is based on the number of inbound links a web page has from other sites. Google sees a link from one web page to another web page as a ‘vote’ for that web page. Google assesses the importance of a web page by the number of votes it receives from web pages in other websites.

The GPR algorithm then goes on to add a weighting to each link/vote based on the GPR of the page the link originates from. The higher the GPR of the web page linking into another web page, the more weight is added to the vote for that web page. So 10 quality inbound links will outweigh 100 poor ones.

What is a good ranking?

Most websites should be able to get a page rank of 1-2 fairly easily within a few months. With sustained attention a page rank of 3-4 is viable within 6 months.

It is important to understand that stepping up from one GPR to the next gets harder each time. This requires to build link popularity which is done by interlinking and submitting to other directories.
A GPR of 5-6 is a very good rank and 7-8 generally indicates sites that have existed for a long time, institutions and well-known brand names.

Relevance First.

It is not enough on its own just to have a good GPR as the GPR assesses importance, not relevance. Therefore when someone runs a search in Google it does not return all the websites with a high GPR, as these would not all be relevant.

Relevance is calculated using a separate algorithm and Meta Tags. This algorithm assesses over 100 criteria and identifies websites that relate to a searchers query. Google then applies the GPR algorithm to sort the relevant websites in order of importance.

Algorithms similar to the Google Page Rank are used by other major search engines to apply importance to websites. Both MSN and Yahoo use algorithms as part of their overall assessment of search results to assess the importance of each website. Each of these algorithms has a unique method of defining and assessing a web page’s importance.

The Google Page Rank algorithm assesses the importance of each website in relation to all other websites. The number of websites featured on the Internet is increasing daily, which means that both search engines and website owners are aiming at a moving target. Algorithms are set to change frequently in the future as search engines improve their techniques and update their algorithms to alienate the perpetrators of illicit tactics.

Search engines are not trying to be difficult they want to find the most relevant websites to a user’s search – that is their business.
Search engines are always refining their algorithms to improve the relevance of websites returned in their results. So concentrate on ensuring you websites content remains relevant and current for your target market as well concentrating on your Google Page Rank.

Maximising & Maintaining your GPR

You can check the number of inbound links Google has referenced for a web page by entering the following into the Google search bar “link:www.yourdomainname.com”. (For Taree Internet we would enter “link:www.tareeinternet.com".) This will return a list of the links Google has referenced to a web page.

*Don’t be disappointed if the number is small.
* Google is not able to reference all types of links which may explain why not all of the links
* The links need to be inbound i.e. from different websites than the page you are reviewing.
* It does not help you to have loads of ‘outbound’ links to external websites.
* The link needs to come from a page that has a good GPR
* The inbound links should come from other websites relevant to your website.
* Check the quality of any websites you invite to link to you
* Do not use online link building engines – these can have a negative impact on your GPR.
* Ensure your activity is sustained rather than just sporadic over a short period of time.
“The GPR algorithm is based on the number of inbound links a web page has from other sites. Google sees a link from one web page to another web page as a ‘vote’ for that web page”.

Pagerank - A Visual Representation

Many people don't understand Pagerank, and the effort required to achieve the different levels. Pagerank is based in a linear scale, and hence going from PR1 to PR2 is alot different then going from PR9 to PR10.

Below is a visual representation on how the linear scale of Pagerank works.