Fun Facts About the Pagerank Calculator

Page Rank is an indication of how well Google likes a web site. Mighty computers at Google calculate bazillions of ranking factors and churn out page rankings for oodles of web sites around the world. Most web experts agree that unless Google gives a site a favorable page rank, the site will never appear on the first page of search results from a Google search. If a site isn't endorsed by Google, traffic to the site may suffer.

Many extremely smart people and some well-meaning experts with too much time on their hands have speculated how a pagerank is precisely calculated. In all honesty, Google ain't telling no one. Unless you have an advanced computer science degree and a real job working at the Google complex in Mountain View California, you'll probably never know all the down and dirty details. You might have success getting hired as a night janitor, then hacking into the office network and downloading crucial Google software. On the other hand, if you're that talented, there's a job for you at MIB that will pay more and offer better dental.

The original calculations are defined here. Obviously the algorithm has changed over time as more and more well-meaning Internet gurus seek to circumvent the calculations in order to get their sites to the top of keyword-based search results. Larry Page and Sergei Brin call their work "The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing order to the Web."

Computer scientists generally agree that the PageRank Calculator doesn't take into account content, writing style, visual quality, or commercial value of any particular site. The PageRank algorithm is intended to indirectly consider these important aspects by measuring how well other sites 'vote' for the site in question by linking to it.

PageRank values run from 1 to 10. 1 is the 'worst' PageRank and 10 is the 'best'. Very few sites in relation to the entire Internet Universe will ever achieve the coveted PageRank of 10. The scale is arranged in a non-linear model; in fact it's configured such that each increment is 10 times the significance of the preceding value. For example, a site with a PageRank calculated as 2 is 10 times 'better' (according to Google) than a site with a PageRank calculated as 1.

Speaking in very general terms:

• Get sites with high PageRank to link to you.

That's it. There's almost certainly more to it, but according to the original paper published by Page and Brin, there you have it.

The PageRank for any given site is no secret. The good folks at Google won't try to hide your score from you. Download the Google Toolbar to get a handy (and free) PageRank Calculator or search online for sites that have access to the results of the official PageRank Calculator. These intermediate sites don't actually perform the calculations; they act as a front-end to Googles results.

The PageRank calculator favors sites such as IBM.com, which has a PageRank of 8. Needless to say, that's a huge value. IBM obviously has a significant number of quality backlinks, which contribute to the high PageRank value.

Google.com ranks itself at 10. Yahoo.com comes in at a solid 9.

The University of Cincinnati, uc.edu, has a PageRank of 7.

Twitter has an astonishing PageRank of 9. We use the word 'astonishing' simply because the value was achieved in a very short time period.

Google cares because the PageRank Calculator goes a long way toward determining what results will be returned from a Google search. When you surf on over to Google.com and search for the phrase BidCactus Penny Auction, powerful computers around the world compute the results of your search partially based on PageRank calculations.

Maybe. Literally thousands of web sites happily take your money and offer the promise of pumping up your PageRank. Keep in mind that what works today may not work tomorrow. What works today may actually hurt you next week. No one outside of Google knows the current algorithm inside the PageRank Calculator. Spend your money at your own risk.