What Is PageRank ?

PageRank was developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford. At the time that Page and Brin met, search engines usually linked to pages that had the highest keyword density, which meant people could game the technique by repeating the same phrase over and over to attract higher search page results.

According to Wikipedia.com

"PageRank is a family of algorithms for assigning numerical weightings to hyperlinked documents (or web pages) indexed by a search engine. Its properties are much discussed by search engine optimization (SEO) experts.

The popular search engine Google to help determine a page relevance or importance uses the PageRank system. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed it while at Stanford University in 1998."

However, examine search results and you will find that page rank isn't the only determining factor in search engine placement, although it has value and is part of the algorithm. Let's do a search on SEO in Google.

Site 1: PR7
Site 2: PR0 - doesn't have anything to do with search engine optimization
Site 3: PR4
Site 4: PR6 - Wikipedia reference to search engine optimization
Site 5: PR6
Site 6: PR6
Site 7: PR6
Site 8: PR4
Site 9: PR5
Site 10: PR7

According to webworkshop.net,

"PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web.

Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is.

Google calculates a page's importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page's PageRank is calculated.

Google describes PageRank:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”