The Motive Web Design Glossary

PageRank™ (PR)

PageRank is Google’s ranking software that calculates the relevance of a webpage to the search keywords entered. The software analyses both the number of incoming links and the ‘quality’ of the referring webpage to generate a relative measurement between 0 (low-relevance) and 10 (high-relevance). (The ‘quality’ of the referring webpage is an abstract measure of how authoritative it is on the subject matter.)

Google directory: PageRank is a relevance rating from zero to ten, displayed as a green bar to the left of a webpage listing.

PageRank is displayed as a green bar to the left of a webpage listing in the Google Directory, and also in the Google toolbar.

In a nutshell: the more high-quality-webpages that link to a webpage, the higher its PankRank.

Related terms: link farm, reciprocal link, referrer, search engine, search engine optimisation

References

• Google sandbox theory validated (Wayne Hurlbert, Blog Business World)
  3 Apr 2005: Some search engine optimisation experts believe Google has introduced a probationary period for new websites, possibly to discourage search engine spamming.
• PageRank: Google’s original sin (Daniel Brandt)
  The evolution of PageRank and the objective criteria used to determine relevance. The impact of Google’s PageRank on the web-at-large.
• Google PageRank calculation (Whitelines)
  Explanation of the calculation (algorithm) used to determine PageRank.
• Google technology (Google)
  The official line on PageRank.
• PageRank finder (SEO Guy)
  Generate a list of webpages matching specific keywords and PageRank value.

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