Google PageRank: A (Not so Small) Guide 2019

Howdy guys! Today we’re going to talk about one of the oldest and well-known part of the Google algorithm which is called PageRank. But before you go, let’s check the most popular questions about this “OG” part:

1. What is Google PageRank?
2. How to check the PageRank?
3. Does PageRank still important in the ranking?
4. How to increase my PageRank?

Let’s take a closer look at all these questions.

As said Wikipedia, PageRank (PR) is one of the oldest algorithm used by Google Search Engine to rank web pages in their SERP. This name was given by Larry Page, one of the very first founders of Google.

But what does the PageRank EXACTLY mean?

To answer this question, you should take a look at the Stanford University study created by Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google and PhD.

So one of the first documents which describe this algorithm is The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.

In this document, you can check the main information about one of the first ranking algorithm. In short, the PageRank based on academic citation literature, but instead of counting the number of citations, this algo count the number of backlinks to the website. This gives some approximation of a page's importance or quality. PageRank extends this idea by not counting links from all pages equally, and by normalizing by the number of links on a page.

Here is the original definition and formula of Google PageRank:

Shortly, the website PageRank (PR(A) is calculated as the number of backlinks (T) multiplied to damping factor (d=0.85), and the overall ratio of the multiplication to the number of backlinks from the website (C(A).

Hmm… What does THAT mean?

Let’s simplify again: the higher number of quality backlinks gives the link juice to your web-page (website), and the smaller number of outgoing links from your website (page) to other sources, the better overall ratio you’ll get and the higher PageRank get your website.

Remember: there are NO tools that will show you your REAL page rank. Thus, there’s no need to use third-party services to check PageRank - you may assume that it would be helpful for you, but not. It wouldn’t.

A far-far away, long time ago (before 2013), everybody can check PageRank (PR) for their website by using the toolbar and compare their website to others if wanted.

But in 2013 Google officially removed PageRank because of numerous link manipulations, shady link schemes and spamming.

Here is the video where Matt Cutts gives useful information and full answers about Google PageRank in 2013:

So are there any ways to check this metric? Well, you can use authoritative third-party services that provide their personal algorithms which based on (or very similar to) PageRank. For example, you can use Ahrefs, MOZ or even Majestic to check overall website performance and see your domain and page authority.

Shortly, yes. PageRank still plays a vital role in Google’s ranking algorithm. No, this is not assuming - Google team said so:

So PageRank still important and uses as one of the ranking factors across 100 other signals. Does it the most important factor? Well, the answer is in the importance of the backlinks: as you may know, backlinks are still one of the heaviest factors for higher ranking, and the backlinks are the part of the citation algorithm of the PageRank.

The simplest way to increase Google PageRank is growing high-quality, natural backlinks from authoritative resources. Why do you need only these types of backlinks?

Yes, you have heard this million times before. But in the meaning of the “high-quality” backlinks, we’re putting the information straight from the algorithm basis. As we said before, PR is quite similar to science citations. Thus, how can algo rate the quality of these sources? Simple: it algo rate the overall quality of the citations of the pages that cite your web-page (website) - in other words, your backlink donors should also have high-quality backlinks.