What is PageRank?

PageRank™ is the meat and potatoes of Google’s search engine technology.

It was developed by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. The name PageRank is a trademark of Google. The PageRank process has been patented, but the patent is not assigned to Google. It remains the property of Stanford University.


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How does PageRank work?

Well, the “official” Google website description is: “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’”.

“Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.”




This tends to explain why Google searches yield much better results than most other search engines.

You can read more articles on PageRank if you want to know more about link importance, how to improve your PageRank, and more, on the internet. Good luck with your PageRank.