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The complexities of Google’s PR (Page Ranking) System have grown more difficult to understand since the Hilltop Algorithm was introduced. This beginner’s guide to the PR system explains the basics of what PR is, what it does, and how it affects your site’s rankings. This revolutionary search algorithm has made it to where the most relevant and popular sites with the best content do the best on Google’s search page. Keep in mind, this algorithm is kept secret by Google for fear of it being exploited, but the basics have been released for study.

In a nutshell, Google’s Page Ranking is a system devised to rank pages based on their content and popularity and place them accordingly within the search results based on their relevance to the general topic. Or, in laymen’s terms, it’s a system to make sure sites are put where they need to be, both in search results and in rankings. A site dealing with pet care is not going to be listed in the top 10 when searching for “web design,” but depending on its content and popularity it could be well towards the top of the list on “pet medicine” or “sick dog.”

PR is on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest ranking possible. Of course, only a very few sites have a PR 10 or even a PR 9 for that matter. PR 7 and PR 8 sites are considered very good sites, with lots of original, relevant content and a great deal of inbound links. You will usually find sites with a high PR at the top of the list under Google’s search engine, and many others, since relevant content and lots of links is almost a prerequisite for being placed high in any of the major search engines on any of the major keywords.

PR “Spread”

PR is set up to “pass on” from one site to another, or one page to another if it is within your own site. As the PR “spreads” throughout your site, you will get less and less utility from it. A link from a PR 5 site to your main page will give you a PR 4 link to your main page. Since your main page will be linked to other pages within your site, any links on your front page (up to 100 pages) will then receive a PR 3 link from your main page. It continues to trickle down, exponentially losing power until it peters out.

Keep in mind, however, that depending on what page linked to you, and how many links were on that page in the first place, your PR could be significantly lower than expected. If a PR 5 page links to your site, but has 300 other links on that single page, you may get anywhere from 0 to 4 PR. Thus it is beneficial to have a limited number of links on your main pages, due to the smaller amount of PR being passed down with the more links it is being passed to. Overall, a small, concise site with lots of inbound links and few outbound links would be the ideal “PR trap,” although relevant, original content is needed as well.

PR’s Effect on Rankings

The effects of PR are plainly viewable to anybody with the Google Toolbar. Simply search for a keyword, and look at the PR rating of the top 10 sites. The highest PR will usually be on the top of the list, depending on content. If a PR 8, however, has a keyword that does not match their content, they will most likely be ranked lower than a PR 6 on the same keyword with more relevant content on the subject matter. A site with high, relevant, and original content, along with matching keywords and a multitude of links from related sites, will place extremely high on searches containing their keywords. A site with old content that is not updated often with links from non-related sites and keywords that do not relate directly to their content, on the other hand will probably not show up within the top 100 sites on the same search.

So basically, PR is what drives listings on the Google Search Engine. How to optimize your site to take advantage of this system, however is the real challenge.

Utilizing PR

To make proper use of the PR system, many different things must be done to assure your website is “acceptable” within their guidelines. Basically, making your site more relevant to your topic will have a great effect on your PR ranking, especially if you are “popular” among those sites, or have many links coming from related sites. Each site on the internet has a Page Rank, assigned by Google, based on their content and popularity. To view the page rank of each site, download the Google Toolbar from their site. It will automatically show you the rank of the page you’re on with a small counter on your task bar.

Now, obviously a “good” site links to you, it will have a better effect on your website’s popularity. Say, for example, a PR 3 website puts a link on their links page to your main page. That link will be considered a PR 2 link to your site (PR – 1), giving you a PR of 2 on your main page. If, however, a PR 0 site adds a link to your site, there is almost no change. A link from a grayed-out site, which means they have a negative PR, will actually be a detriment to your PR, as they have been deemed a site not relevant to anything (or relevant, but banned) by Google. Of course, a link from a PR 7 site to your own will be drastically more effective in boosting your PR than even 20 PR 3 links would.

Getting Good Links

One of the most important things to remember about getting a high PR ranking is to get links from “good” sites. These include sites that are directly related to your own site in some way, and preferably sites with a high PR of their own. Good examples include award pages and directory listings. With relevant links coming from related sites with a high PR, your site will not only gain PR fast, but will gain in real popularity. High PR sites traditionally have high traffic due to their link volume and content. If there is a link to you, it is a sign that you have a good site on a related topic with good content as well, attracting visitors who didn’t find exactly what they wanted. More visitors means more PR, which in turn gets you more visitors. You can see how important good links can be.

Try to steer away from sites with unrelated topics, as these will probably not help much, if any with your traffic, and may actually bring a penalty to your PR. Other sites to steer away from when trying to work up your PR would be FFAs, or Free For All link programs. These sites allow browsers to enter their link into a huge list (sometimes of thousands of other sites). Usually you will find that these sites have been “grayed out,” or given a negative PR effect by Google, bringing your PR down if you have a link from them.

Doorway pages are another thing to avoid. These are shorter, shallow sites that are created simply for putting as many keywords and links as possible on their pages in order to “farm” PR for higher rankings on Google. These, in general, once they are found are “grayed out,” as well as sites they link to. Enough links from these will assure that your site will not show up on Google’s search at all.

Getting Good Content

Good, original content is not as hard to obtain as some might think. By writing articles for your site you can provide pages of completely relevant and unique content, as long as the articles are on subject. A few articles will give you plenty of original content to get a fairly good “relevance rating” with Google, which contributes to your PR rating, and it will not trigger the dreaded “duplicate content” tag that will doom your site to obscurity.

In addition, if you can get enough relevant content together, you can eventually become recognized as an “expert” in the field. With that status, you will get enough traffic to boost your PR even more. People are always in need of information, and if you provide good enough information, you will find yourself getting links from all over the internet.

PR in a Nutshell – An Overview

Basically, with enough unique content and relevant links, you can have a high PR site and be ready to take on the internet. Overall, things to keep in mind are to stay consistent with your main topic, both in links and in your content, and stay away from the “no-no” sites mentioned above. If you can do these things, you can gain a high PR and a good ranking with Google in a relatively short period of time.

You can see other articles by Claude Beavers on this topic at: SuperFaster.com – Free Web Promotion Articles and Resources

The recent patent application filed by Google details numerous items the search engine uses to rank web pages. The specific application is summarized as:

“A method for scoring a document, comprising: identifying a document; obtaining one or more types of history data associated with the document; and generating a score for the document based on the one or more types of history data.”

The patent application sheds significant light for those pursuing search engine optimization with Google. Patent applications can be difficult to understand, so following are highlights for those that don’t speak lawyer.

Google’s Link Evaluation

It is well known that Google uses links as a significant ranking element. Although the patent application doesn’t dispute the value of linking, it does highlight the best method for pursuing a linking strategy. Simply put, consistently adding links will have a much better effect than adding links in bunches.

Google notes in the patent application that it looks at links from a historical perspective. The search engine notes the discovery date of links, the life span of the link and the speed at which a new web site obtains links. This approach reveals that Google is discounting quick link exchange strategies such as buying bulk links for your site. Instead, Google appears to consider a natural linking evolution as a sign that a site is “legitimate.”

The specifics of a good linking strategy are a bit difficult to nail down. In the patent application, Google tries to hide the evaluation method by listing factors that “might” go into evaluating links to a site. Factors that “might” be considered include:

1. The anchor text of the link.

2. The discovery date of the link.

3. The growth rate of links to your site.

4. The rate at which links to a page appear and disappear.

5. The age of links with older links carrying more value.

6. Numerous links to a new site will be looked at as spam, unless some of the links are from highly valued sites.

7. Link growth that is constant is optimal.

8. Sudden bunches of new links will be devalued as spam.

A general theme becomes clear as one reads the Google patent application. Google values sites that are in it for the long term, update regularly and consistently grow in link popularity. Taking this theme into account, it is easy to understand why the Google sandbox exists.

A steady approach is the key if you intention is to gain top rankings in Google. While the delay can be aggravating, the results are certainly worth it.

Halstatt Pires is with http://www.marketingtitan.com – an Internet marketing and advertising company comprised of a search engine optimization specialist providing meta tag optimization services and Internet marketing consultant providing internet marketing solutions through integrated design and programming services.

The first question most people have is, “What the heck is a “Google?” It is a play on the word “googol,” which is the mathematical figure 1 followed by 100 zeros. Depending on the level of your love for math, this is either the greatest or lamest name for a search engine. Regardless, the clever kids at Google have turned it into a cultural standard.

The Beginning

Larry Page and Sergey Brin co-founded Google in January of 1996, then known as BackRub. The boys were in the early twenties and classic computer geeks. Sergey was born in Moscow, alum of the University of Michigan and visiting Stanford. Larry was assigned to be his guide. During this visit, they obviously hit it off or today nobody would give a hoot about linking strategies.

Although two men and the name “BackRub” may raise some questions, the name actually referred to a method for producing search engine rankings. Specifically, the BackRub search engine was designed to analyze the “back links” to a site. Although BackRub developed a following with those in the know, nothing much happened for a few years.

1998

As with most new businesses, the boys needed some serious cash. The brass at Yahoo was interested, but initially passed. Sun Microsystems, of all companies, provided an answer. Andy Bechtolsheim was one of the founders of Sun and, thus, had the necessary deep pockets. $100,000 later, the new search engine company was on the way to stardom.

A New Name

As legend has it, BackRub became Google for a rather humorous reason. Apparently, Bechtolsheim accidentally made the $100k check out to “Google, Inc.” You can make your own guess as to which one of the boys said, “Hey, I have an idea for a new name.” In September of 1998, Google opened a small office in Menlo Park, California. The rest, as they say, is history.

Today, Google is based in Mountain View, California. Google prefers email communication, but you can get a live voice by calling (650) 623-4000. If you really want to talk to them, refuse a charge from the company on the credit card you use for Adwords. They will contact you pretty quickly!

The company went public in 2004 [Symbol: GOOG] and has a stock value of around $250 per share. Larry and Sergey are sickeningly wealthy. One can assume that Andy Bechtolsheim is also doing all right.

The Future

In the last year or so, Google has certainly received its fair share of criticism. PageRank is almost useless in relation to ranking in search results. At the time of this writing, PageRank hasn’t worked for three days, which means a change, shuffle, dance or whatever you want to call it is coming.

On the competition front, things are a bit murky. It seems a week doesn’t go by without a patent lawsuit being filed against the company. MSN and Yahoo have started to raise the level of competition and more will be coming. Google’s reliance on AOL as a traffic source is also a bit troubling given the continual loss of market share by the company that nearly brought Time Warner down. Gmail is dogged by patent issues, not to mention questions about violations of the privacy of users. All and all, things are not as rosy compared to a few years ago, but they can hardly be called bad.

Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to predicting if Google will become just another search engine. Personally, I think it will, but not because of any of the above. Instead, the evolution of the Internet suggests there will be a next “big thing.” Who knows, maybe Google will get a Grub [Grub.org] in its Nutch [Nutch.org].

Halstatt Pires is with http://www.marketingtitan.com – an Internet marketing and advertising company comprised of a search engine optimization specialist providing meta tag optimization services and Internet marketing consultant providing internet marketing solutions through integrated design and programming services.

“Nothing last forever but the Earth and sky.” – from Dust in the Wind by Kansas.

Google has spent the last year evolving from a search engine to a giant media corporation. At birth Google was worried about only one thing, search – and that focus is why it became so successful. As Google spreads out many are wondering, are they doing it too fast? Are they letting quality slip? As any company evolves it will make mistakes, but has Google lost sight of its goals?

Google gained large distribution when Yahoo switched to it to drive down Inktomi stock price, only later to buy Inktomi. Google then came to power stealing traffic from Yahoo by providing clean, relevant results, and good search tools for surfers and webmasters alike. Many estimate that Google controls in excess of 75% of the search market.

Microsoft is still working on its search engine. Yahoo recently acquired Overture and is working behind closed doors in much the same way as MSN is. LookSmart has not updated Wise Nut in a long time, is hated by a large portion of the internet community, and is soon set to loose most of its distribution. And Ask Jeeves (owner of Teoma) has its top results powered by Google AdWords. With Google powering Yahoo, AOL and many other sites Google lacks a clear competitor today.

Right now Google can take its huge lead and extend it, or let it slip. No system is perfect and there will always be complaints, but I have to wonder if Google has forgotten why or how it became such an icon.

Many people have reported their Google Toolbar has been failing to return PageRank 90% of the time. While the hysteria around PageRank is somewhat overrated, it would be more assuring if the feature worked often.

One of the biggest problems search engines face today is a lack of quality content on the web. Earlier this year Google introduced a program called AdSense which displays its pay per click AdWords ads on many mid sized web sites. AdSense was designed to help pay to produce better content sites. Soon after Google introduced AdSense they included a related searches link set underneath the ads which made webmasters angry. This technique was siphoning off traffic from websites back to Google with no payment of any kind. Quickly Google had to repeal this move.

Google has also signed its AdSense members to a gagging clause. Beyond that gagging clause many have complained about getting kicked out for reasons they could not even challenge. Then for these same members to see how much money Google had owed them up to that point they had to agree to another set of terms that prevented them from criticizing the AdSense program. But the ads get worse.

Google was in a race with Overture to be the first to provide broad matching on its search terms. Google got there first. The idea behind broad matching is that it will allow Google to sell more of its ad space by providing ads on similar terms that were not yet sold. Overture allows different bid prices on different levels of matching. Google sets a single price on the ads, and this causes a huge problem for those who do not know how to use the system.

First the broad matching ads are less relevant. The term broad indicates far reaching and is self explanatory to its end effect on relevancy – which is in the exact opposite direction of Google’s roots. This new type of broad matching matches many remotely close search phrases to those paid for by the advertiser. Couple near matching with the fact that ad sites and pages are scanned for relevancy (which is frequently inaccurate) and a big problem starts to come about with how to provide relevant ads on the syndicated results.

While many of the SEO experts know how to use negative keywords, tracking, and other advanced features, the smaller advertisers do not always have the resources or understanding to effectively use this new, more complex medium.

Now instead of rewarding businesses for hunting out the phrases that exactly match them (and thus providing higher quality search results), Google is rewarding the largest companies by allowing them to be lazy. Google is shooting itself in the foot by degrading relevancy for short term profits.

Large companies bid on generic cover all terms at prices where they loose money on every transaction until the competition goes under. Not only do these name brands enjoy higher click through rates (due to brand recognition), but those with stockpiles of cash can afford to burn through thousands without a blink. Many small sites can not, thus the sad state of internet media is that it is now consolidating much the same way as offline media is.

It gets even worse for the small website now though. These same ads which they are using may now appear on pages that sometimes do not even remotely fit the ads. I was looking at the GMT clock time zones to ensure my clock was set at the right time today (so I missed daylight saving time). The page which had the different time zones listed a few cities and a group of AdWords. Most of these AdWords were targeting Las Vegas (most likely the most expensive US city). Las Vegas was not even one of the cities mentioned on the list. Not a relevant ad set. Bad for all parties involved.

What is the result of this change to AdWords? Lower quality ads at a higher price. Nick Denton predicted that the expansion of these ads across the web (especially coupled with decreased relevancy) that users will start to ignore them. Much the same way as banners have faded, only a few years may be left before this advertising medium chips away and destroys itself.

What about the regular Google search results? At least they are strong, right? Sometimes they are rather week. Some clients have had search results dominated by the same sets of interlinking sites. Aiming to fight spam, Google is acknowledging this fact by incorporating a new major algorithmic change on the web live. My site went from #17 to #7 to not in the top 1000 websites for “search engine marketing”. While I still have customers that need work done on their sites, this sporadic re mixing is not refreshing in my mind, as well as in the minds of many of my customers.

I have already had concerned emails arrive from friends worried about loosing thousands of dollars a month as their top listing evaporated. All I can tell them is wait and see.

Much of what people have feared would happen to Google after it goes public has already happened. It is clear that competitive open source alternative search engines such as Nutch are not desired so much as required.

About The Author

Aaron Wall

author and owner of Search Marketing Info

http://www.search-marketing.info

aaron@search-marketing.info