The 5 Myths About Google Pagerank
Author: Oleg Ishenko
The recent Toolbar RageRank update once again has generated a
lot of discussion in the SEO community. Webmasters report their
websites receiving not much more traffic despite the increased
visible PageRank. In numerous forum threads people question the
reliability of toolbar values. By unveiling the following five
myths I hope to answer to some of the uncertainties caused by
this update.
1. PageRank values range from 0 to 10.
While some people believe that PageRank is an integer number or
at least converge to an integer after intensive recursive
calculations, actually it is a floating point number. Google
rounds up the real value to the closest integer and puts it on
the 0-10 scale which is displayed in your browser toolbar.
2. PageRank value displayed in the toolbar is the one used to
rank the results.
As you might have noticed, the toolbar value is updated every
few months with no regular intervals. In the present time
Google continuously calculates and updates PageRank so that
sometimes actual PageRank and its toolbar values can differ.
The toolbar value should be considered not as a current rank
but as a level your page has reached by the time of the latest
toolbar update.
3. PageRank is the primary factor to rank the search results.
Not exactly. PageRank was the backbone of the Google success as
a search engine because of its integrity, ability to use the
unique democratic nature of the web and hyperlinks, and
relatively high immunity to abuse. But as years passed the
Google technology became far more sophisticated. Now Google
uses a cloud of factors to rank its search results. Some of
them are query specific (keyword saturation of the page copy
and the backlinks'anchor text) and some of them are domain
specific (domain age, keywords in domain name, and of course
PageRank). Nobody outside the Google's offices knows the actual
weight of each factor and it is quite possible that PageRank is
no longer the primary one.
4. Google toolbar shows an increase of PageRank for my pages.
My traffic is going to skyrocket!
Wrong. There won't be any sudden traffic increase after toolbar
upgrades any more. As I said before, the continuous calculation
and update of the Google's internal PageRank means that the
rankings also adjust gradually as your pages get or lose
backlinks. So the toolbar upgrade itself will not cause any
changes in search results.
5. Toolbar PageRank is of no use, it is just for entertainment.
This is allegedly a quote by one of the Google representatives.
This is only partially true. The reason why Google doesn't show
the actual PageRank any more is that there have been repeated
attempts by hackers to access an exploit these data. Since 2004
the toolbar values updates are no longer synchronized with the
actual rankings changes, and therefore should not to be
considered too seriously in terms of SEO. However toolbar ranks
still remains the easiest and most obvious way to evaluate the
quality of a page and millions of web users regularly judge
websites according to what Google toolbar shows them.
About The Author: Oleg Ishenko, MCSE, MCDBA, 8 years of IT
experience gives useful advice on search engine optimization
and web marketing at his blog http://SEOResearcher.com
(http://www.seoresearcher.com)
lot of discussion in the SEO community. Webmasters report their
websites receiving not much more traffic despite the increased
visible PageRank. In numerous forum threads people question the
reliability of toolbar values. By unveiling the following five
myths I hope to answer to some of the uncertainties caused by
this update.
1. PageRank values range from 0 to 10.
While some people believe that PageRank is an integer number or
at least converge to an integer after intensive recursive
calculations, actually it is a floating point number. Google
rounds up the real value to the closest integer and puts it on
the 0-10 scale which is displayed in your browser toolbar.
2. PageRank value displayed in the toolbar is the one used to
rank the results.
As you might have noticed, the toolbar value is updated every
few months with no regular intervals. In the present time
Google continuously calculates and updates PageRank so that
sometimes actual PageRank and its toolbar values can differ.
The toolbar value should be considered not as a current rank
but as a level your page has reached by the time of the latest
toolbar update.
3. PageRank is the primary factor to rank the search results.
Not exactly. PageRank was the backbone of the Google success as
a search engine because of its integrity, ability to use the
unique democratic nature of the web and hyperlinks, and
relatively high immunity to abuse. But as years passed the
Google technology became far more sophisticated. Now Google
uses a cloud of factors to rank its search results. Some of
them are query specific (keyword saturation of the page copy
and the backlinks'anchor text) and some of them are domain
specific (domain age, keywords in domain name, and of course
PageRank). Nobody outside the Google's offices knows the actual
weight of each factor and it is quite possible that PageRank is
no longer the primary one.
4. Google toolbar shows an increase of PageRank for my pages.
My traffic is going to skyrocket!
Wrong. There won't be any sudden traffic increase after toolbar
upgrades any more. As I said before, the continuous calculation
and update of the Google's internal PageRank means that the
rankings also adjust gradually as your pages get or lose
backlinks. So the toolbar upgrade itself will not cause any
changes in search results.
5. Toolbar PageRank is of no use, it is just for entertainment.
This is allegedly a quote by one of the Google representatives.
This is only partially true. The reason why Google doesn't show
the actual PageRank any more is that there have been repeated
attempts by hackers to access an exploit these data. Since 2004
the toolbar values updates are no longer synchronized with the
actual rankings changes, and therefore should not to be
considered too seriously in terms of SEO. However toolbar ranks
still remains the easiest and most obvious way to evaluate the
quality of a page and millions of web users regularly judge
websites according to what Google toolbar shows them.
About The Author: Oleg Ishenko, MCSE, MCDBA, 8 years of IT
experience gives useful advice on search engine optimization
and web marketing at his blog http://SEOResearcher.com
(http://www.seoresearcher.com)
