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PageRank is a term most people are unfamiliar with. But it’s important to understand its meaning and how it affects website ranking. PageRank is a measure of how popular a website is on the web. It’s used to determine which websites are shown first in search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher the PageRank, the more popular the website is.
SERPs are the pages that show up when you search for a word or phrase on the internet. They’re where Google and other search engines place your results. In order to rank higher on SERPs, your website must have a high PageRank. You can see this effect when you compare two websites: One has a low PageRank, and the other has a high PageRank.
What is the original PageRank formula?
PageRank is a ranking algorithm developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 at Stanford University. The original formula used for calculating ranks was:
The number of links to a webpage from other pages on the same site (or “backlinks”)
The number of links to a webpage from pages on other sites (or “forward links”)
The number of pages containing content on the given site (or “hosted pages”)
Then, the ranking would be calculated according to this formula:
Ranking = 10*log(#backlinks/#hostedpages) + log(#forwardlinks/#hostedpages)
This formula is still used by Google Search today.
How does the original PageRank formula work?
The PageRank formula was created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google. The original PageRank formula is a mathematical algorithm that measures the importance of a web page relative to other pages on the same subject.
This means it can be used to determine how many other pages link to a particular web page. As you’ve probably guessed, this is important because links are what make up the search engine ranking factors that Google uses to decide which websites to rank higher in search results.
The PageRank formula is basically a way to measure how important your website is, with each link being worth one point and each incoming link worth one point as well. Then, you simply multiply these points together, with the result being your website’s “PageRank”.
To use this formula, you start by adding up all of your links from high-quality sources. These are typically from pages that have “authority” (i.e., they have lots of incoming links) or from links that come from sites on the same subject as yours. Next, you want to subtract any links coming from low-quality sources (i.e., those with very few incoming links).
Why might the original PageRank formula be flawed?
The original PageRank formula was created by Google in order to measure the importance of websites.
The problem with the original PageRank formula is that it has a flaw: it doesn’t take into account how many other sites link to a given website. In fact, it assumes that there are only two links for every website: one from the home page and one from a blog post.
But, this idea is flawed because there are more than two links for each website. There’s a different type of link called an “inbound link” or “interlink.” An inbound link (also known as an interlink) is when one website links to another site either directly or indirectly via another third-party site.
Inbound linking can have an effect on PageRank because if your content is linked to by an inbound link then you have more authority over the content being linked to. This creates a ripple effect in which other sites’ content will receive increased PageRank because they’re linked to by the same inbound links as yours.
How has the web changed since Google was founded?
The web has changed a lot since Google was founded in 1998. Today, content is king, and SEO is more important than ever.
As you can see from the original PageRank formula, Google’s algorithm used to only take into account two things: how many pages link to a website and how well those pages are ranked by search engines. The changes that have taken place in the last 20 years have included more complex formulas that consider the types of content on any given page and links within these pages.
Google now takes into account other social interactions – like shares, tweets, or bookmarks – when ranking websites. This helps them better understand how people view your website as they interact with it and what they’re interested in learning more about it.
What are some of the benefits and drawbacks of PageRank?
PageRank is a system for rating the relative importance of web pages. It was created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were graduate students at Stanford University.
The original PageRank formula calculates a numerical value between one and ten, where 10 is the highest value and one is the lowest, for every page on the web. The position of each page’s score on this scale reflects its importance in the ranking of search engine results.
In other words, a higher PageRank score indicates that a page is more important within the search engine’s results for specific keywords or phrases than pages with lower scores (another way to think about this is that very high PageRank pages are close to being ranked number one).
This system was later implemented by Google as part of its search algorithm, which means that if you want to increase your ranking in Google’s search results, then you need to have a high PageRank score.
There are some benefits of having a high PageRank. For example, if you have an important site on your website with a low or medium-low rank, but it has less traffic than another site with a higher rank but less traffic, then it will be more likely to show up higher in search engine results.
Last Updated on January 4, 2022
Aires Loutsaris is a content marketing specialist working with some of the world’s biggest VC funded startups and eCommerce companies. He has 15 years of experience in organic search optimisation and content writing with over 2500 students enrolled in his Udemy SEO course. An ex-head of two award-winning agencies, he has lectured at the University of the Arts, London College of Fashion on content marketing and has consulted for all three of the Universities he studied at: The Open University, The University of Hull and Kings College University of London. Feel free to connect with Aires on LinkedIn or Facebook.