Checking Your Google PageRank? Learn More About Algorithms And Rankings First

There’s a little known fact that catches many webmasters off-guard when using search engines as a way to promote exposure for their websites. Google applies changes to their web search algorithms around 500 times throughout the year.

 

Many of these changes are minor changes that pile up, optimizing their search engine and making the tool run much better. The changes that catch a lot of webmasters off-guard are actually their major algorithm updates. These algorithms are known for making major changes to their search engine results pages—and how their search engine works.

 

The formula behind the search formula: Google algorithms

 

As stated by Google, algorithms are ‘computer programs that look out for clues to give users back exactly what they want.’ They’re defined as ‘computer processes and/or formulas that take questions and turn them into answers,’ generally facilitating the process of inputting a query and receiving a quick and accurate answer in return.

 

In regards to their own algorithms, Google designed them to ensure that their end users receive SERPs that accurately correlate with the search terms they input into Google’s search engine. Without such rigid algorithms in place, Google’s search engine would look similar to their older versions, a time when people used questionable search engine optimization techniques to manipulate their place in their SERPs.

 

Google’s current algorithms rely on over 200 ‘unique clues’ that help end users understand what they’re actually ‘thinking about’ when they’re querying their search engine. Some of these clues can include things like key terms on a website, the age of certain web content, a user’s home region and something known as PageRank.

 

Measuring the importance of a web page: using Google PageRank

 

What is the importance of a web page? Many people define the importance of a web page as the overall visibility of their entire website, in addition to the content residing on their web pages. To Google, however, there are several components that make a web page important enough to index within their search engine. PageRank is their tool that helps them determine the importance of web pages on the web.

 

PageRank, formally known as Google PageRank, is a link analysis algorithm used by Google’s search engine. This tool assigns ‘a numerical weight to each element within a hyper-linked set of documents, which in turn, helps measure the relative importance within said set.’

 

In other words, PageRank ranks web pages according to the amount of web pages linking back to any single web page. This process essentially makes the amount of incoming links that a page holds important to a web page’s associated PageRank.

 

As an example, PageRank may sort any collection of incoming links with similar or related quotes and/or references. The numerical value generated from these ‘calculations’ more or less denotes their PageRank value. This rank value essentially indicates a web page’s importance; hyper-links count as ‘a vote of support’ via PageRank.

 

A web page’s PageRank depends on the amount of web pages and the page’s corresponding PageRank linking back to them as incoming links. High ranked pages help other web pages achieve a high PageRank, while lower ranked pages don’t see those results.

 

Checking your Google PageRank: is it possible?

 

Webmasters, as a result of PageRank’s impact on Google Search, have found ways to ‘see’ the PageRank of their corresponding web pages. One of the most common ways to check a PageRank is using what’s known as a PageRank checker.

 

PageRank checkers are webmaster tools that help them ‘check the PageRank of a single website, web page and/or domain name.’ Users can immediately generate a projected PageRank value by submitting the URL of any particular website, web page and/or domain in their web form and clicking its corresponding button.

 

Many PageRank checker tools are available at no additional cost. They’re mainly available to help webmasters and their web visitors immediately see the PageRank of any site on the web. Google also employs the use of their own checker tool, though webmasters can access the tool via their Google Toolbar.

 

Thanks to the amount of available checker tools, it’s possible to get an accurate PageRank value. The results from these tools mainly help webmasters determine what’s working and what’s not working, when it comes to the true importance of their website on the web.

 

As mentioned, the number of incoming links to a website can provide a significant impact on their corresponding PageRank. Those same incoming links more or less inform webmasters how valuable and authoritative their website stands on the web.

 

In regards to Google’s algorithms and PageRank, no webmasters truly know the inner-workings of both, however they do affect each other. The criteria Google uses to generate PageRank correlates with how they use their own algorithms to improve their search engine. If webmasters think about that, it’s possible they can understand how Google works to improve how people search on the web.