Google’s PageRank is a number from zero to 10. A new site (such as this one) starts life with a score of zero. Over time, this score will tend to rise in value. Here’s how Google describes PageRank (as at 20 November 2009)…
PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.
It all sounds very reasonable, doesn’t it? Especially as Google go on to give valuable clues about how to acquire PageRank…
PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance.
Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Our search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user’s query.
In addition to the above clues, you can find a lot of detailed information that explains how to earn PageRank all over the Internet. And until recently, I didn’t really question what I thought I knew about PageRank. After all, when I put in the effort I tended to see the results I expected.
Then I read an interesting blog entry on SEOCO. This article essentially accuses Google of punishing the web’s leading SEO sites by deliberately suppressing their PageRank scores.
Of course, I have no idea whether or not this is correct. Yet a quick look at the 4 sites in question shows they have the things normally associated with high PageRank…
- A lot of inbound links from external sites with high PageRank (i.e. many votes from important sources)
- A lot of well optimised and relevant content (from an SEO perspective)
- Deemed by professionals to be the best resources on the web for their specific areas of interest
For an example of this last point, type PageRank into Google. The #1 site on the list is Wikipedia, a source of unimpeachable knowledge (ahem). You won’t find SEOMoz on page one, despite offer over 1,000 PageRank-related articles. Faced with a choice between Wikipedia and SEOMoz, I know who I’d turn to when I wanted up-to-date and useful information about PageRank.
All 4 sites mentioned in the article have relatively low PageRank given their status. Could Google have some undeclared beef with these sites simply because they help people to understand search engine optimisation? And if so, why on Earth would the company take issue with such sites? What else does Google have issue with, and what am I missing out on as a result?
