Google FAQ

[PageRank]

PageRank

PR stands for PageRank. As explained by Google:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.

As explained by WikiPedia :

PageRank is a patented method (an algorithm) to assign a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).

PageRank was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page (hence the name Page-Rank) and Sergey Brin as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine. The project started in 1995 and led to a functional prototype, named Google, in 1998. Shortly after, Page and Brin founded Google Inc., the company behind the Google search engine, which still has PageRank as a key element.

Summary: PageRank is your page's popularity on the Web. (Notice I didn't say website).

PageRank != Page's Rank. They are two very different things.


Google API

With the Google Web APIs service, software developers can query billions of web pages directly from their own computer programs. Google uses the SOAP and WSDL standards so a developer can program in his or her favorite environment - such as Java, Perl, or Visual Studio .NET.

To access the Google Web APIs service, you must create a Google Account and obtain a license key. Your Google Account and license key entitle you to 1,000 automated queries per day.

The only way to query Google's index without violating their terms of service is through the Google API.


Google SiteMaps

Google Sitemaps is an easy way for you to submit all your URLs to the Google index and get detailed reports about the visibility of your pages on Google. With Google Sitemaps you can automatically keep them informed of all your web pages, and when you make changes to these pages to help improve your coverage in the Google crawl.

The Google Sitemap is an XML file in a specific format that tells Google the information it needs to find the pages of your website.

Google Search Shortcuts

site:example.net - find how many pages your site has indexed
link:www.example.net - find out how many incomming links your home page has


What is Googlebombing?

Googlebombing is a certain attempt to influence the ranking of a given page in results returned by the Google search engine, often with humorous intentions. Due to the way that Google's PageRank algorithm works, a page will be ranked higher if the sites that link to that page all use consistent anchor text. A Google bomb is created if a large number of sites link to the page in this manner.


Why does my site rank well in MSN/Yahoo but not in Google?

MSN and Yahoo have vastly different algorythms then Google. With MSN and Yahoo on-page factors (page titles and content) tend to have a greater influence on a page's ranking whereas Google tends to put more value in off-page factors (incomming links). Many websites tend to rank well in MSN and Yahoo before they rank well in Google as it takes time to acquire the backlinks required to influence Google's rankings.


How do I find out what my PR is?

There are many different ways to do this:

Websites that check for you: DigitalPoint, PageRank.net, WebmasterBrain, StarGeek, PR Lookup
Software: Google Toolbar, PageRank FireFox Extension


How often does Google update their PR?

Google representatives, such as engineer Matt Cutts, have publicly indicated that the Toolbar PageRank is republished about once every 3 months, indicating that the Toolbar PageRank values are generally unreliable measurements of actual PageRank value for most periods of the year.

However, PR is updated at Google daily (or close to daily). New links are factored into the equation and they are applied to a page's PR. You just cannot see this this PR until Google does its next public PR update.


When is the next Google PR update?

Estimated to be between June 1st and July 1st.


How important is PR in Google's algorythm?

This subject is open to great debate. It's overall weight has been reduced since it's original inception. Anchor text has far surpassed it in importance. The general rule of thumb is that PR is used as a tie breaker amonst similar ranking sites.


How do I increase my PageRank?

Since PageRank is an indicator of a page's link popularity it should be obvious how to increase your PageRank - GET MORE INCOMMING LINKS! High PR links are ideal but don't underestimate the power of low PR links. Afterall, PR does add up.


Why does <website goes here> have such a high PR/high ranking with so few backlinks?

1) They have a lot of low PR links pointing to the home page. These usually don't show in Google's backlink report but can still propel a site high in the rankings.

2) They have a lot of links pointing to internal pages within the website. These links will only show when you do a backlink report for that specific page, not the homepage. These pages usually pass on a lot of PR to the site's home page and propel it in the rankings.

3) Web pages with high PageRank have linked to the site's home page. High PR links carry much more weight then links from low PR pages. A link from a PR8 or PR9 page can make quite a difference in a web page's PR and ranking.


Why does my website have a higher PR with the 'www' then without it?

Google sees your website with the 'www' (http://www.example.com ) as a different page the without (http://example.com ). Pages that link to the page without the 'www' are hurting your pages with the 'www' as the PR is essentially being split between the two pages. Fortunately this is easy to fix. Use a 301 redirect to redirect Google, and everyone else, to the 'www' page from the non 'www' page. The code would look similar to this (mod_rewrite required):

Code:

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(.*)\.example\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

To go from the 'www' to non 'www' use this code:

Code:

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domainname\.com RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domainname.com/$1 [R=301,L]

How do I stop search engines from indexing some of pages?

You can use a robots.txt file to tell search engines (and other bots, too) where they can and cannot go. An excellent tutorial can be found at http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html . And an excellent example of one can be found at WebmasterWorld: http://www.webmasterworld.com/robots.txt .


I just switched domain names. How do I transfer my PR from one domain to another?

Use a 301 redirect. Put this in .htaccess file in the root directory of the old website:

Code:

RedirectMatch 301 ^/(.*) http://www.example.com/$1

How should I handle external links? (Because I don't want to send PR out of my website)

Outbound links are a balancing act. You need to decide how much PR is worth to you (as compared to your users' experience at your site) and then decide what is the best way to acheive your maximum PR without sacrificing a satisfactory user experience.

One thing you could do is use a robots.txt file to prevent search engines from crawling pages with outbound links. Then no PR is lost because the search engines aren't even crawling those pages. But keep in mind that any internal links on those pages won't be counted either. This is common to do with a directory.

Another thing you may want to try is to use a script that redirects users to external sites (example: http://www.domain.com/outboundlinks.php?id=linkidhere ) and then put outboundlinks.php into your robot.txt file. Then the search engines won't follow the links because they can't access the script that does the redirect. Why would you want to do this? Becasue search engines do follow redirect scripts so the PR is being sent out of your site anyway.

The latest technique available is to put 'rel="nofollow"' in your anchor tag. Google, and others I do believe, will no follow these links and in Google's case not pass along PR.


Does having Adsense on my website help me with my search engine ranking?

Not really. It may get Google to spider your site more completely and frequently as it needs to know what the content is on your pages so it may serve up the right ads. But it won't give you a boost in any way in the rankings. Won't give you any extra PR either.


My site has gone from PR<whatever> to zero. (Or the Google Toolbar is greyed out) Why?

or

My site has disappeared from the SERPs. Why?

This seems to happen on occasion and the natural tendency is to think you've been banned. However, this is rarely the case (if you've been doing bad things then you're not asking this question because you already know why this has happened!). For reasons known only to the powers to be this just happens. After a while, usually next update, things return to normal. What can you do about it? Nothing really. You can write to Google but all you'll get is one of the generic responses that doesn't really tell you anything. The best thing you can do is to sit back, have a beer or three, and wait for things to be set right again....on their own.

Also, new websites can take a while to have visible PR assigned to them. This doesn't mean the site doesn't have PR. It just means the Google Toolbar or other methods of checking just haven't been updated yet.


Buying Text Links

For SEO purposes webmasters often buy links for their sites. As links from higher PR pages are believed to be more valuable they tend to be more expensive. It can be an effective and viable marketing strategy to buy link advertisements on content pages of quality & relevant sites to drive traffic & increase a webmasters link popularity. However, Google has publicly warned Webmasters that if they discovered to be selling links for the purpose of conferring PageRank and Reputation, their links will be devalued (ignored in the calculation of other page's PageRank). The practice of buying and selling links is intensely debated across the Webmastering community.


What is "rel=nofollow"?

In early 2005, Google implemented a new attribute, rel="nofollow", for the HTML link element, so that website builders and bloggers can make links that Google will not follow for the purposes of PageRank— they are links that no longer constitute a "vote" in the PageRank system. The nofollow attribute was added in an attempt to help combat comment spam.


How do I rank well in Google?

Ranking well in Google is fairly straight forward.

1) Acquire incomming links with the anchor text you wish to rank well for (This is the most important by far).

2) Optimize your title tag

3) Use and optimize your Header tags (h1, h2, h3, h4)


Why does Google have less pages indexed then MSN/Yahoo?

This should be addressed by the Bigdaddy update. Google has admitted to having issues indexing some websites. Their Google Sitemaps does address this issue as well and is probably the best thing you can do to ensure Google crawls your website. The PR of your pages is also a likely factor. If they are very low (PR2 or less) they tend not to be indexed well.


Why does Google show less backlinks then Yahoo and MSN? Why doesn't Google show all of my backlinks?

Googles purposely does not list all links pointing to a particular page. This is an effort to keep webmasters from manipulating their system. They also only update backlinks on a periodic basis so you may have acquired new backlinks but they haven't been refelected in Googles update. That doesn't mean Google doesn't know they are there. They just haven't publicy acknowledged them yet. It is also important to keep in mind that Google only shows backlinks for the specific page you requested (usually the homepage), not the whole site like other search engines do.

Also, Google also only displays the number of backlinks to one specific page. This is usually the homepage since that is what most webmasters check for. Yahoo, and other search engines, report the number of incomming links per domain.


Why doesn't Google index all of my site's pages? Why does Google update some pages more often then others?

1) Your site is new. You don't really expect Google to index every page you have immediately, do you?

2) Your site has low PR. Consensus indicates that Google will crawl sites that have higher PR deeper then sites with low PR. They figure the more popular your site is (PR is a popularity contest, remember?) the better a resource it must be.

3) Your site uses dymanic pages/session ID's and they are not search engine friendly. Session ID are search engines like garlic is to vampires. They repell them. Have your site remove them when the bots come around and you will fare much better (yes, this is ethical and acceptable to the search engines). Query strings that are either very long or conatin "id=" tend to limit the amount of pages some search engines will index (Google is a good example of this). Change "id=" to "page=" or something similar and you should do better. Or read the article about search engine friendly web pages.

If a site has high PR and updates its content frequently, Google will index its pages more frequently (usually every few days or even sooner) then low PR sites that do not update frequently.


Future PageRank

Future PageRank is not accurate. It is for amusement purposes only. If you choose to use one of these tools it is for your amusement only. You should not be making any decisions based on the results you get.


Google Links

Report Spam to Google
Google Information for Webmasters
Google Sitemaps
Google PageRank Explained
Google API
WikiPedia's Explanation of PageRank
Backlink Anchor Text Checker

This article originally writed by John Conde from JNA Merchant Services

Thanks John

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