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Does Google Page Rank Matter? Ins and Outs of Google PageRank

When it comes to Google Page Rank, site owners and SEO professionals may wonder: Do minor changes in PageRank scores matter? Is increasing those scores worth your effort? To start, it’s important to understand how PageRank works. What is PageRank? Let’s look at Google’s own Technology Overview page, which says:

When Google was founded, one key innovation was PageRank, a technology that determined the “importance” of a webpage by looking at what other pages link to it, as well as other data.

In other words, PageRank (named after Google co-founder Larry Page, not a direct reference to how well a “page” will rank) assigns a score to every page in its index based on the number of websites linking to it and the relative quality of these links. PageRank scores are reported on a 0-10 scale, with PR0 being the lowest indexed rank and PR10 being the highest.

For new websites the PR will typically be reported as N/A until a PageRank update occurs.

How often is PageRank updated?

Speaking of Page Rank updates, how often is Page Rank updated? In 2008, there were 5 PageRank updates, 5 in 2009, 1 in 2010, and 3 so far in 2011. Also, although it is only updated a few times a year in the toolbar, Google constantly updates PageRank on their end. Why don’t they want you to know this? They know that if site developers obsess over Google Page Rank scores, they will be less likely to create sites that are high quality, useful and relevant to the user landscape.

How PageRank is Determined

It’s at the mercy of an equation, basically. According to Page Rank Explained (not an official Google site), the equation used to calculate PageRank is most likely* a version of the following formula:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))

The formula above is the original equation that was published when Google was first developing the PageRank metric, so it’s logical to conclude that it has been changed over the years. However, the base variables are likely to still be similar.

Is PageRank important?

In a word, maybe. PageRank does not draw a parallel that strongly to search engine results placement, and having a high PageRank doesn’t automatically guarantee you a high placement on Google. The reverse is also true: If you do rank well, it doesn’t guarantee you a high Google PageRank.

However, SEO experts recommend not disregarding it altogether. Page Rank still matters in that it contributes to a site’s indexing frequency (sites with high PageRank are considered to be more important and “worthy” of being crawled by Google and analyzed more often); and, it is useful as an indicator of penalties from bad back linking strategies (if you are experimenting with back linking strategies).

The ins and outs of Google Page Rank will continue to change, so it’s important to stay updated on the most recently available details.

*The current Page Rank equation is proprietary Google information.