What is Google PageRank and how to calculate?

Every SEO Professional must understand the concept of Google PageRank. Google PageRank is a mathematical technique used by Google for determining the relevance or importance of any web page. This system is developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University in 1988. Google PageRank is the single most important factor that affects your search engine rankings in Google.

The Google PageRank algorithm of ranking web pages is based upon the principle of voting. When a web site links to another web site, it passes a vote in favor of the web site. As more and more web site link to the other web site, the vote keeps increasing, and the Google PageRank also goes up. Another important factor is- who is linking? Is an important page linking or just a new web page that has not been indexed? The vote for an important page is more than the vote for a unimportant page. Therefore, Google calculates a pages importance on the basis of the number of votes cast for the page and who is casting them.

The outbound links also have a bearing on the Google PageRank. Every web page has some out-bound links whether they are going off to other sites or to other pages of the same web site. The out bound links, lead to a decrease in the ability of a page to pass Google PR passed by the page. It is quite possible that a link from a Google PR 6 page passes less Google PR than a PR 4 page if the PR6 page has far more out bound links than the PR4 page. If a web page has 8 out bound links, it will only pass one eighth of its available PageRank. If a page has only one out bound link, it will pass 100% of its available PageRank.

Google PageRank is based on following:

1. The quantity of inbound links to a page.
2. The quality of inbound links to a page.
3. The Google PageRank only flows from the sender to the receiver. It is not possible to loose Google PR by linking to a low PR site.
4. The ability to pass PR also depends on the number of outbound links on the page.

We can take up a small and simplified scenario to understand Google PageRank.

If you have 2 options for getting inbound links to your web site, one is a PR 7 page with 3 out bound links and other a PR 5 page with 2 outbound links, which would you choose? The answer should be 5 page as it passes 5/2=2.5 PR while PR7 page will pass 7/3=2.3 PR

This scenario has been depicted in below diagram:

The PageRank of web page 3 is 4.8 and can be calucalated by adding the total PR flowing to it from webpage 1 and webpage 2, which is:

PR of webpage 3= (PR of webpage 1)/2 + (PR of webpage 2)/3=2.5+2.3=4.8

Please keep it in mind that you should not leave an opportunity to get linked from a low PR web site if you think it could improve in PR or have good future prospects.

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