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SEO & Web Article - Page Ranking (PR)

Google Page Ranking (PR)

Page Ranking is the level of recognition and importance Google assigns to a given web page. This level of importance is expressed on a scale of 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest).

The abbreviation of the Google page ranking is PR ( not to be mistaken for PR as in Public Relations).

It is important to note that PR are assigned to web pages, not entire web sites ; each page within a web site gets different PR treatment and it is not unusual to see web sites that have, for example, a highly ranked home page while their other pages rank very low.

Although Google's internal rules and algorithms are a closely guarded secret, it is generally accepted that Page Rankings are a directly proportional function of a web page's link popularity, i.e.: the number, quality and relevance of external links (backlinks) pointing to it. However, to a certain (though much lesser) degree, PR is also dependent on the amount and quality of internal links pointing to and from a page within its own site, in other words on the importance the designer of the web site has given to that particular page as an internal "hub."

The more links of good quality point to a web page, the higher its PR will eventually be. The expression "eventually" is deliberate: in contrast to search result placements which can change on a weekly or even daily basis, page rankings change very slowly on the upside, and it can take several months for a web page to gain one single rank. (Losing ranks, by the way, can be a faster process).

Most web pages have a page ranking of 0 or 1. A PR of 5 or 6 is considered very good, while only a few sites contain pages higher than 7. Even some superstars such as the home pages of youtube, Yahoo! or Wikipedia have so far merited a mere 9. Among the elite few "10"s are, for example, some Google pages, and pages of government sites.

Page ranking = link popularity has been compared to real life situations; in Society, the more a person is being linked to (i.e.: called, visited or written to), the more popular she is. Therefore, anyone aspiring to be popular will try to create a network of friends to be linked with.

Similarly, web pages that have many links pointing to them, are "popular" and merit a higher page ranking. This is why link exchanges, link farms and other mass promotions of links are in demand.

There is a major caveat, however: just like in real life the quality of your friends matters, in web life the quality of your link partners matters very much, too. In fact, Google will penalize web pages which have a large number of low quality links pointing to them. Only the systematic accumulation of high quality link partners will result in ever-increasing, satisfactory page rankings.

For more information about our SEO and Web consulting services, or an absolutely free web site analysis and SEO consultation, we encourage you to contact us. Our SEO Montreal consultants will be pleased to help.

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