Rich's WebWorld (blog)
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One of the most interesting things about the web, for me at least, is how dynamic it is. It grows and changes and evolves. Java, for example, was once touted as revolutionizing how web pages would be displayed. Java applets appeared everywhere doing all kinds of fancy tricks. But if you printed the page, all you got for the applet was a gray box. And applets died out.

When frames came into existence, they appeared everywhere. Rather than helping navigation, it became more difficult. Screen space was taken up by things that were not important. And worst of all, search engines didn't index frame contents. Now you don't see frames used much any more.

In 1996, the keyword meta tag was born. It was adopted by four search engines and keyword spamming was born. Two years later, the keyword meta tag was worthless. The legend lives on for reasons I cannot comprehend.

During the early days of the web, many search engines were born. In the beginning, search results were terrible. Sites would show up in a search that had nothing at all to do with the subject. As one search engine developed better results, its popularity would rise. Then another would appear that would provide even better results and it would climb in popularity. Hot Bot, Lycos, Exite, Alta Vista, came and went as top search engines.

One search engine with staying power was Google. It remained focused on search while many others tried to become portals. As its results continued to improve, so did its popularity. Today, more than twice as many searches are done on Google as their closest competitor, Yahoo.

What put Google on top?

It started with link popularity. Google figured that sites which had many links pointing to it were more popular than others. Popularity meant it had content other sites thought was important. And search results seem to verify this.

However, there are always those who try to take advantage of the system rather than building better web sites. Soon, sites sprang up whose only purpose was to link to other sites with the intention of improving their link popularity. Link farms were born.

Link popularity was dead

Google is not one to rest on their laurels. They were continually trying to improve search results. When they saw a large number of site using link farms, they changed their ranking algorithm. And link popularity was dead.

Perhaps Google's timing could have been better. It was just before the Christmas season when they changed their ranking method. Many commercial sites ramping up for a big sales season suddenly dropped out of site. It caused a furor and many threats of lawsuits. But that's what you get for taking advantage of the system.

PageRank was born

Google's new algorithm was called PageRank. The number of links pointing to a site no longer mattered. It was the quality of the site doing the linking that added value to the link. The new method meant that a site with a few important links would rank higher than another site with dozens of low value links.

Exactly how Google does its ranking is a closely guarded secret. If it became known, sites would try to take advantage of the system to increase their rankings. Then Google would change the rules again. They would rather have a site's ranking depended upon the quality of the site.

Although the details aren't known, the basis for PageRank is relatively simple. Pages are given a PageRank value of zero to ten. And Google has given us a tool to estimate PageRank. Remember, however, that this is just an estimate and not the only factors for determining a site's ranking.

Get PageRank from the Google Toolbar

To get an idea of a web page PageRank, simply download the Google Toolbar from http://toolbar.google.com/index_2 It works with Internet Explorer although a tool for other browsers is under development. When installing, be sure to check the optional features of which PageRank is one of them.

When navigating to web sites, the PageRank tool will show a green bar for sites ranking from 1 to 10. Place the cursor over the tool and a label will popup giving the numeric value of the PageRank.

PageRank is for pages, not web sites

It is important to remember than PageRank is given to web pages, not web sites. You can have a high PageRank home page but a low PageRank links page and vice versa. Links from a low rank page will have little value. Of course, Google assigns other values to pages not included in the Toolbar so PageRank is not the Holy Grail.

One of the biggest advantages of PageRank is the difficulty in manipulating rankings. But understanding it's principles can be useful in improving rankings.

Understanding the PageRank formula

Google had its beginnings as a university project. An academic paper published at that time provide some insight into Google's algorithm. Although it surely has been altered and expanded since its inception, it is useful in understanding Google's PageRank process. This is the formula:

PR(a) = (1-d) + d (PR(t1)/C(t1) + . . . + PR(tn)/C(tn))

where PR(a) is the PageRank for a particular page (a) - not for the whole website.

1-d is a dampening factor to prevent the value from becoming excessively large.

PR(t1) is the PageRank of the first page linking to PR(a). C(t1) is the number of links on the page. And "+ . . ." repeats until we reach the final number of (tn).

You will notice that the PageRank of a page PR is divided by C, the number of links on the page. The more links, the smaller value each link has. And the formula continues on until it has added up all the link values pointing to our page PR(a).

Massive linking doesn't work

This formula effectively kills link farms. A page with a hundred links on it with only one of those links pointing to our site will have a link value very near zero. Add up thousands of zeros and you still have zero. Attempts to boost rankings use "link popularity" will fail. This also shows that there is no need to "penalize" sites using link farms. Those links won't count for anything. If penalizing link farms worked, you could kill a competitor's ranking by putting them on link farms.

Improving PageRank

The PageRank formula should make it obvious that the main factor in improving rankings depends upon who links to you and how they link to you. Links from a high PageRank site clearly does more for you that many links from sites with little or no PageRank. And links from pages with few links on them increases the value of the links.

It is also important to realize that having lots of outgoing links on your own pages devalues the importance of your links to other web sites. High value sites are reluctant to exchange links with low value sites. Therefore, it becomes more difficult to obtain high-value links.

What is a good PageRank value?

There are a very small number of site that reach 9 or 10. These would include sites like Microsoft, MSN, BBC News, Adobe, and Internet.com. They have huge numbers of high-value sites linking to them. Adobe, for example, has most of the sites offering pdf files having links back to them for downloading the free Acrobat Reader. Obviously, it isn't reasonable to expect getting links from these top ranked sites. Even sites ranked at 7 or 8 are very difficult.

It's usually best to start with sites ranked at 4 or 5 to build up your own PageRank. Once you have achieved that level of ranking, higher ranked sites become easier targets. Be sure not to dilute the value of your own links by having too many links on a page.

PageRank is only one factor in rankings

Don't forget that PageRank is only one factor in obtaining good rankings with Google. Except for on-page optimization, it is the most quantifiable factor in rankings and therefore easily explained. There are other factors used by Google and other search engines such as semantic analysis and community relationships which are too complex to discuss here..

So is Link Popularity really dead?

Yes and no. Yes, it is dead when it comes to getting good rankings. No, it is not dead when you consider it's other benefits. It will get you indexed on the search engines much faster than submitting. It will get search engines to come back and re-index your site more often. This is especially valuable as you optimize your web site and need timely feedback. And it will even bring traffic to your web site.

If you want to increase your rankings on Google, you must consider PageRank. This is an important factor when you consider that more visitors will be searching for you on Google than any other search engine.