Google Page Rank
I've known that Google keeps a Page Rank for every site that it indexes, and I've also known that it changes constantly. Truthfully, I've never really paid much attention to it. I just search for a few key words and see how close to the top the sites I'm interested in are. I've decided to spend a little more time watching Page Rank, and this article marks the beginning of my education in SEO.
Recently, it was brought to my attention that there is an extension for Firefox which displays the current page's Page Rank as calculated by Google. It places an innoccuous little number between 0 and 10 in the status bar, and it's a handy little reference for anyone with even a mild interest in SEO. After I installed it, I started browsing around the internet to a few familiar sites to see who is ranked where. Here's a short list of what I found:
Page Rankings
- Apple
- 10
- Microsoft
- 9
- HP
- 9
- top-frog
- 6
- outleted
- 5
- Scott Hill
- 5
- Joel Schou
- 4
- www.pennypacker.net (nb: the www has been permanently removed)
- 4
- PFilm
- 4
- Halbie
- 3
- pennypacker.net
- 2
- http://pokemontel.co.uk/
- 0
An Interesting Observation
What I found most interesting is that this site ranks better if the www subdomain is included in the
What's Next?
I'm writing this article differently than I'd normally write. I'm taking a little more time than normal, utilizing a more technical approach. Notably, I'm giving some more thought to the content of the document than I'd normally give for one of my random musings, and I'm dividing the document into logical sections. Each section is then marked with a proper headline. This style of writing is technically better for accessibility anyway, and presumably it will also be better for SEO. I'm curious to see how this document structure influences the page rank of this article compared to that of other articles on this site.
Resources
If you are unsure of available resources to check page rank, there is the Firefox Extension which I installed and which inspired this article; a full-blown Google Toolbar for Firefox; a Konfabulator Widget; and lastly, a Dashboard Widget. Unfortunately, there is nothing available as a plug-in for Safari that I'm aware of, which is really a shame because I much prefer Safari to Firefox and I also enjoy seeing the Page Rank when I visit a page.
Matt Cutts keeps a blog on the topic, and he's something of an authority on the topic. seochat.com has page that checks future Page Rank that you can use to check any uri. And of course, you can read Google's webmaster section which provides an overview on what makes a more search-engine friendly page.
Final Thoughts
SEO is an exhaustive topic — so much that people make careers out of it. There are volumes of information on the web about good SEO practices, and also techniques that are sure to get your page removed from search engine indexes. I will not claim to be an expert, and I think my modest Page Rank is a testament to that, but I will point out that simply by building an accessible page and keeping content relevant, you can score a 4 or a 5 with few or no back-links to your site.
In a few weeks I hope to revisit this topic, mostly out of raw curiousity, to determine if this document garners a higher page rank just because it is intelligently divided into sub-sections.
- under:
- about the site
- Web Development
- Posted on
- 2005-10-22
Comments:
Is it just me, or does the page rank seem to fluctuate a lot more often lately? One day my site is on ranking, then next day the rank changes by a few points, then again a few days later. Is it just me?
It's probably because they're going through a 'google shuffle' phase. From time to time, google re-indexes their data, and all the numbers jump around for a bit. It ought to level out in a little while if it hasn't yet.
Hee hee, I seem to have learned a bit about how search engines work since I wrote this. Fascinating stuff to be certain.
But again, and I've told you this before, the Page Rank that Google makes public is for entertainment purposes only. It doesn't have much of a real bearing on how your site will rank. It's widely speculated that Google is now using an elaborate system that assigns rankings based on keywords. So your site may rank 10 for one key word, and 2 for another.
Ultimately, I think the important thing is to focus on doing what you do well, and the ranking is really a non-issue. A search enging is beholden to providing relevant results, so if your site is relevant, it's their job to rank you highly, not yours.
SEO, in and of itself, is a pretty shady practice of distorting relevant search results in order to attract revenue to your own (irrelevant) site. It flies in the face of accessibility and a democratized web. It exists because it generates revenue, and while the relevant traffic is nice, you'll get that without SEO tricks. But it can be addicting to follow!
John,
Page Rank is independent from KEYWORDS. It is calculated through an algorithm that looks at the interlinking of pages throughout the Internet universe. You are right that your page might rank low or high in the search results for different keywords, but that has nothing to do with page rank, which is URL specific.
With the 301 you've set up for your site the score for the old www. should get passed on to your main page. having www. before urls is dumb seo and dumb in general :(
Thanks for clarifying that there were no plugins to view pageranks for Safari. I was actually looking for one. I guess I will stick to Firefox whenever wanting to visualize that info.
Manny,
there are some page rank dashboard widgets out there. They look at page rank independently of the browser you use.
But they require that you put the URL into the widget, which is double work. Just thought I mention this option.
Hello, i am still looking for a PageRank checker however for the Windows version of Safari..any ideas?
This article is closed to further commentary. But you can always contact me directly.