HOW GOOGLE PAGE RANK IS CALCULATED

In covering this topic, there are few things that we need to understand:-

• What is Google Page Rank?
• How is it calculated?
• How do you lead page rank to most important pages in your website?
• How leading page rank to important pages can increase your rankings?

Am going to call page rank - PR from now hence forth in this hub

There has been a big misconception with regard to the Google PR, that it indicates where you are ranked for a particular keyword which is not true. For example, if your website is a PR5 then you are ranked #5. This is completely not true.

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.

Look at the diagram below:

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.

And this makes a lot of sense to me by the way; I just hope it does to you too.

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.

What will happen if we link A to B?

WEBPAGE A: 0.15 + (0.85*0) = 0.15

WEBPAGE B: 0.15 + (0.85*(1/1)) = 1

WEBPAGE C: 0.15 + (0.85*0) = 0.15

We can see that by just linking B from A have raised the PR from the initial 0.15 to 1. This is a huge raise.

By using the calculate PR, we can use the figures to calculate our PR again, this way we will get the “true page rank” of our pages. From the little mathematics we all know, the more iterations you do the less gradual the change in the PR with those iterations. For instance:

WEBPAGE A: 0.15 + (0.85*0) = 0.15

WEBPAGE B: 0.15 + (0.85*(0.15/1)) = 0.2775

WEBPAGE C: 0.15 + (0.85*0) = 0.15

You can now see how much the PR has dropped with just a single iteration to almost the previous value before any linking.

If you keep on doing those iterations, the number will change will keep on diminishing.

Suppose we try and link all the web pages to each other:

WEBPAGE A: 0.15 + (0.85*1/2)) = 0.575

WEBPAGE B: 0.15 + (0.85*(1/2)) = 0.575

WEBPAGE C: 0.15 + (0.85*1/2)) = 0.575

After a single iteration the web pages PR is 0.575 and so by linking all the web pages, we have raise the PR from within the website. Something you should consider doing now that you know.

You can actually do this within your website to spread the PR to pages that you want to raise the PR and ignore the once that you do not care so much about their ranking.

HOW WAS THAT?

The first time that I went through this formula I did not get it until I went through it over until I got it right so do not despair if you did not get it right the first time, just go over it again and you will sure get it.