This topic is often debated however I still wanted to briefly discuss it because I still see so much confusion about what PageRank (PR) is.
Firstly, PageRank is actually named after Larry Page, co-founder of Google Inc. So the “page” part of PageRank doesn’t refer to a web page but its creator. I think this is where most people get confused – PageRank is not actually an indication of a pages ranking, it is just a small part of it.
PageRank is essentially a score assigned to a web page based on the links to it. It is used by Google as one of more than 200 considerations when ranking search results.
The idea behind PageRank is that a link to a page is a vote for the page’s credibility. The more links a page has the more credible the page is likely to be. It doesn’t stop there – if a highly credible page links to a page then its natural that it’s vote should be worth more than a less credible page.
The PageRank calculation doesn’t take in to consideration any other factors other than a page’s links – it doesn’t look at your code, your title tag, or anything else. It’s based solely on links. Your code, your title tag, your page’s name and so forth are some of the other 200+ considerations used by Google when ranking the results.
It’s because of all those other factors that PageRank shouldn’t be your sole focus and is the reason why Google have now removed it from the Google Webmaster tools and continues to recommend webmasters don’t fixate on it.
It’s completely normal for a page from a PR0 site to appear higher in a search result then a much high PR site because of those other factors. Thank goodness!
Google’s argument is that you should concentrate on your site’s content and attract links because people like your content – which makes sense.
The issue I feel is that because Google is so secretive about its algorithms, people fixate on PageRank because it is one of the rare ways you get an indication of what Google thinks of your site.
It is important to have a PageRank however remember that it’s only 1 of 200+ considerations and spend your efforts accordingly.
