What is Google PageRank?

Everything is about trust. The Google PageRank tells you, on a scale from 0 to 10 how trust worthy and important a page is, according to Google.

How does it work?

When you link to a page you are at the same time saying to Google that you trust that page or think it has some interesting content. Otherwise you wouldn't link to it. So a high number of people linking to your website will give you a higher PageRank.

Does it sound easy? Well, it's a little more complex than that, since Google calculate your PageRank from the PageRank of the pages that links to you. It’s not so strange really. Think of it like this, if a nut case tells you on the street: "The world is going to end" with a sign on his stomach that says "Repent now", you might have a hard time believing him. You probably won't be convinced even if you meet a hundred of this people.

But at the same time, if you meet a Harvard professor that tells you: "The world as we know it will end, because of the global warming, if we do not stop our pollution". That you might believe since you trust him more then the other guys even though they were over a hundred people.

It's the same thing with Google's PageRank. If a site with PageRank 10 (like the Harvard professor) links to you, it will make Google trust you more and give you a higher PageRank then if hundred sites with PageRank 1 or 0 would link to you (like the nut cases on the street).

What's a good PageRank?

To get a good PageRank is hard. It’s easy to get a PageRank of 1 or 2, and normal for a homepage to get a PageRank of 3 on the main page. After that it gets a little bit harder. If you have a PageRank of 4 then it’s good and 5 it’s really good. And if you have a PageRank higher then 5 you are playing in the big league. For example Foxnews.com has a PageRank of 7.

What's PageRank Good for?

A high PageRank mens that Google believes your homepage is important. If Google thinks your homepage is important, the Google search both will crawl you more often and also go deeper when they do so (crawl = when Google visit your homepage and indexes all your pages).

Your PageRank might also inflict on the search results for your homepage. In this case the PageRank is not everything since a lot of other things also inflict on the search results for your page. For more information about this, read about about SEO (Search engine optimization) here.