Joe Majewski

Google’s PageRank Update

Google is in the process of performing PageRank updates today. I recently opened up my web browser and was surprised to find that my PageRank went from a pitiful PR0 to a respectful PR2. This update has really boosted my morale, as I worked very hard for that PR.

I’m going to keep on doing what I’m doing and maybe I can earn a PR3 by the time they release their next update. I have written many articles about Google PageRank which will surely be in the list of related posts found below this article, so if you are interested in learning about how to increase your Google PageRank, or to simply learn more about how it’s calculated, check out some of my other blog posts.

That’s all the news for today!

Aiming For PageRank 1 :: My Insight Into Google’s Algorithm

It wasn’t long before many of the pages on this site began being assigned PageRank 0 (PR0), which baffled me at first. I had always been under the impression that PageRank was something that took many months to update. It seems that perhaps PageRank 0 is the exception, or maybe Google assigns PageRank values based off of the PageRank of the rest of the site.

This simple hypothesis would explain why certain YouTube videos achieve PR3 or PR4 weeks after being released, as they are quickly crawled and assigned a temporary PageRank during the period of time between legitimate updates to preserve Google’s accurate results.

Google’s results are constantly changing due to what they refer to as “rolling updates”, made to keep everything up to date. If it took three months for all new pages on the Internet to become valuable to the search engine then there would be millions of outdated pages that “deserved” to be atop the lists but didn’t make the PR update “cut”.

I wouldn’t want to give myself a bad name, so I am going to stand out and admit that this is all just my simple explanation based off of observations that I’ve made. This would also explain why some websites dramatically rise or fall in PageRank seemingly overnight, as the “legitimate” update rolls through and determines a more suitable PageRank for that specific website.

Who knows? Maybe Google truly believes that this website has already earned a PageRank 2, but because of the fact that the official update has not yet been run through, all I can do is wait and find out. For the time being, all of my pages will either be labeled as PR0 or PR N/A.

There is a lot of mystery behind the infamous PageRank algorithm, and I am slowly beginning to understand more and more about it. It will be a happy day once I log onto the Internet to find that this site has got some green on that bar (you know what I’m talking about).

And oh, how I despise the waiting game.

Earning PageRank 0

On this day, November 14, 2009, Google has finally given the homepage of this site a PageRank value of zero. Prior to today, none of the pages on this site had PageRank information available. Note: PageRank 0 is not the same as PageRank N/A.

It only took two weeks for me to get noticed by Googlebot, which was much shorter than I expected. PageRank 0 doesn’t seem like anything to get excited about, but this just goes to show that putting time and effort into a project can produce desired results. PR1 is the next major step forward, and it’s going to take an even greater amount of effort.

What’s the difference between PageRank N/A and PageRank 0? The difference is quite large actually, and the same goes for the difference between each step in the PR ladder. Google will put more weight on my website when it’s within the pool of results grabbed from the search query than it did before. So now, when someone searches Google for “PageRank”, I will be much closer to the front of the results. Granted, it would be a miracle if I ever actually reached the first page for such a popular keyword, but you get the point.

I have another blog with PR1. Every time I post a new article to that blog, it immediately goes to the top of the search results (or very close) for queries containing the exact title of the blog post. This is not always the case, as if I write about something very popular in the news (such as the death of Michael Jackson), my article will not make it to the first page unless I alter the query to add more of my site’s keywords. Granted, not a lot of people search Google for the exact name of the blog posts I write, but rather for more generic phrases.

Here’s to PageRank 1!

How to Increase Your Google PageRank (Part Two)

[ Part One ] [ Part Two ]

Now that we have a general understanding of Google PageRank, we can step it up a notch and begin getting into some of it’s more complex and important aspects. So how exactly does Google determine the PageRank value of a given page? The answer isn’t simple.

About the Google PageRank Algorithm
The exact algorithm that Google uses to calculate PR is constantly being enhanced, and it will more than likely forever remain a mystery. To put it simply, Google is playing their safe card; they don’t want people abusing their search engine to gain top results for irrelevant keywords. Do you remember the famous “French Military Victories” bomb, where Google’s engine would respond with “Did you mean French Military Defeats“? Many people believed that it was Google themselves that had created the prank, but that’s not the case at all.

Searching for this term now produces results regarding this historic prank.

In fact, Google is always updating their search algorithm with the attempt to create a more perfect, fool-proof system. Their technologies can detect these bombings, placing such websites into a virtual sandbox, removing their PageRank value entirely. Interestingly enough, Google has refused to manually alter these malicious results in order to honor their search engine, which gives every website an equal opportunity.

The Algorithm Defined
Every page on the Internet that is known to Google begins with just a single PageRank point. Upon achieving a certain number of these points, the PageRank of that given page will escalate to the next level. The scaling is logarithmic, meaning that the number of points needed to rise from PR1 to PR2 is much less than the amount needed to get from PR2 to PR3. With that said, please keep in mind that the Internet is always growing, meaning that the number of points needed is always on the rise.

While it may appear that I am stating the obvious, please consider this statement: The cumulative amount of points that span the entire Internet is equal to the number of pages on the Internet. Thus, PageRank is essentially constant, only increasing with the addition of new pages to Google’s index.

So how does a page gain more of these points? [ Part three is coming soon. ]

[ Part One ] [ Part Two ]

How to Increase Your Google PageRank

[ Part One ] [ Part Two ]

Google’s PageRank algorithm is one of the most sought after formulas on the Internet. It should be your top priority as a webmaster to maximize the PageRank of your pages to the best of your ability. But how can you increase your PageRank if you aren’t even sure how it’s calculated? In this article I will discuss the aspects of Google PageRank that I find to be most vital to webmasters; the information that will ultimately help drive more traffic to your website. That is what you want, is it not?

For obvious reasons, I may occasionally refer to Google PageRank as PR for the remainder of this article. Please keep in mind that PageRank is not something that can be gained overnight; you must earn it, and cherish it. PR is like Internet gold, so do what you can to get as much of it as possible. I guarantee that you won’t regret the positive outcome that couples a solid PR.

Where Can I Locate My PageRank?
If you have Google’s Toolbar installed on your Internet browser, there will be a green bar (or lack, thereof) that will tell you the PageRank of the page that you are currently visiting. Remember, PR is not assigned to your website as a whole, but rather to each individual page within it. A PR of N/A designates a page that is either too new, or is not relevant enough according to Google to be given a real value. Do not confuse PR N/A with PR0, as they are entirely separate ranks. In fact, a page with a ranking of PR0 is a great start if you are new to the practice of Search Engine Optimization, and may be ten times more important (give or take) to Google than a page that is not yet ranked. That’s just a rough estimate that I’m throwing out, but you will certainly find that pages on your website with a valid PageRank will be updated more frequently and drive more traffic.

If your website is relatively new, it may take several months for your PR to update. Google performs rolling crawls across the Internet, meaning that it constantly finds new pages and updates old pages. Google determines the rate at which it crawls each website, and in general, the more important that Google believes a page to be, the more often it will get crawled. These web crawls do not immediately affect the PageRank visible to you. PageRank updates are performed every few months and may take a few days to process. There is no exact date that is revealed for when these updates occur, and they don’t always happen at regular intervals. Do not be discouraged if your pages are still not ranked by Google, as there are many things you can do to help improve them.

Now that you understand why it’s so important to have pages with a high PageRank, let’s proceed to discuss how it’s calculated and ways in which you, as a webmaster, can help improve your score.

[ Part One ] [ Part Two ]