Google PageRank Assignment Dissected

In the SEO arena there is a lot of attention paid to PageRank as an indicator of a domain's value. Although it is probably one of the most important aspects of a domain's value in the eyes of Google, there are a few points that should be understood. Pages that don't have any PageRank are often symbolised as having N/A PageRank.First of all, for anyone who doesn't know what PageRank is - it is a score used by Google to decide how important a domain is based on analysis of hyperlinks. This holds true for both external and internal hyperlinks. Google gives each page on the internet a value and when one page links to another it passes some value onto the page it is linking to. The higher the PageRank, the more likely Google is to trust it. Google PageRank has eleven values, between 1 and 10. Also, pages that have a lot of low PageRank and PageRank N/A hyperlinks pointing to them can have their PageRank lowered as a result. The higher the PageRank of web pages linking to a given page, the higher its PageRank is likely to be. So, if a web page has 4 PageRank 4 and 3 PageRank 3 links pointing at it, it will probably be assigned a PageRank of 4. The most important factor in the assignment of PageRank to a web page is the PageRank of the pages linking to it. The sheer quantity of links does not help to increase PageRank. PageRank is generally not assigned to a page higher than the pages that link to it. A website can have a high PageRank with relatively few links pointing to it if those links are of a high PageRank. There are those that suggest that the text content of the page affects PageRank assignment, but this doesn't seem to be the case. There is no evidence that text affects PageRank other than pages that have been spammed often have their PageRank removed. When it come to sub-pages, the time Google has known about them is a factor in PageRank distribution. When new sites first get assigned PageRank their sub-pages often remain without any PageRank. In general, sub-pages are a little slow to get assigned PageRank. Google is generally less trusting of sub-pages unless they belong to a trusted domain. In particular websites with a lot of sub-pages and even more so sites that link to a lot of internal pages (like directories) can struggle to pass their PageRank to internal pages. The structure of the site has a major role to play in the assignment of PageRank. Google uses what is known as block level analysis to analyses web pages. They use their vast knowledge of the architecture of the web to decide what links on a page are probably the most trustworthy and the pages these links point to are more likely to be assigned PageRank. Google can and do change websites' PageRank. This is generally as a penalty for sites that have used unhonest methods. This can often cause all the site's sub-pages to loose their PageRank. It has also been claimed that in the past Google has made mistakes in PageRank assignment. Last but not least, the PageRank of a web page may change even when there has been no change in the links pointing to that page. This is either due to changes in the structure of links between all websites or adjustments made by Google. Sky Alfaro is an SEO consultant with the SEM Labs SEO Agency where she helps small to medium sized companies with search engine marketing training.