Google Searches and Google Page Rank


	Google Searches and Google Page Rank
	How Google Searches Work Google Page Rank Search Engine Results Page (SERP) So is that all there is to it? Link Exchanges Popular Fallacies Manipulating PageRank

	How Google Searches Work Many search engines exist, but by far the best for most purposes is Google. It is so good because it uses objective data to assess how relevant a site is for a particular search. Most importantly it looks at the number of other relevant sites that link to it. So, if you do a search for, say, bananas, the sites that are listed first are the ones that have lots of links to them, but not just any links. They have lots of links from other pages that talk about bananas.		Google is also by far, the most popular search engine. Other search engines, like Yahoo, include paid for entries in their search results, so you can effectively pay for a high listing with them - which is one reason that the search results are usually so poor.
	Google Page Rank Google page rank is a number between 0 and 10 that measures the popularity of a site. Sites with high Page Ranks (PRs) have lots of incoming links and lots of visitors. Many people and organisations with their own websites assume that their best policy is to get as high a page rank as possible. They further assume that they can achieve this by getting as many links as possible. This is why you get lots of e-mails inviting you to exchange links with companies selling sunglasses, car hire, holidays, etc There is a flaw in this theory which is that a high page rank per se does not ensure that your site will feature high up on Google searches for specific words or phrases. It would be possible for your site on bananas to have a Google PR of 8 and yet not appear on the first 100 places for a Google search on the word "bananas". If all your incoming links are from websites about sunglasses, car hire, holidays and other such topics then Google will not consider your site to be relevant to bananas. So if you have a website, you need to be clear about your objectives. Do you want a high page rank, or do you want to come high on the list when people do a Google search on specific key words and phrases. Your link building strategy will be very different depending on your objectives. If you want a high page rank you want as many people to link to you as possible, especially those with high page ranks themselves If you want to appear high up on Google searches for certain key words and phrases then you want as many links as possible from other websites that appear high up on Google searches for those key words and phrases.		Hang On, If that's true then … … you might find websites with low page ranks listed higher than websites with high page ranks for specific search terms. Yes, that's right. You do find exactly that. …. You could have sites that come high on Google searches for words and phrases that do not even appear on their site, if lots of other sites link to them using these words and phrases… Yes, that's right. In 1999 Microsoft would come first on any search for "more evil than Satan himself" and in 2000 a site concerning George W Bush came first for searches on "dumb motherf**er" (Google now takes steps to prevent this practice of "Google Bombing" by which website owners provide unwelcome links, but the principal remains, and these examples very clearly emphasise how the system works) … how can Google distinguish between, bananas* the yellow fruit, Bananas the Woody Allen film, Bananas my local nightclub, etc etc It can't (which is why your local nightclub might be trying to exchange links with major banana importers) … How can it work at all, since the process seems to be circular. Ranking are established by the number and quality of incoming links. But the quality of those links has to be established in the same way as mine. Isn't there an infinite regression here. There is regression, but not infinite - the system just needs a few iterations to converge at a stable answer. We can't do the mathematics here but it doesn't matter what value you initially assign to each site, after enough iterations the values will converge on the ratings you see in practice.
	Search Engine Results Page (SERP) The Search engine results page (SERP) is the actual result returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The SERP consists of a list of links to web pages with associated text snippets. The SERP rank of a web page refers to the placement of the corresponding link on the SERP, where higher placement means higher SERP rank. The SERP rank of a web page is not only a function of its PageRank, but depends on a relatively large and continuously adjusted set of factors. Search engine optimization (SEO) is aimed at achieving the highest possible SERP rank for a website or a set of web pages.
	So is that all there is to? Incoming links? No. Google are always refining their algorithm, incorporating objective ways of assessing how good a website is. Even if you knew the algorithm today, it might be different tomorrow. That's why your best policy is to build a good website. Create good quality unique content. Give it a clear simple structure. Mention your key words and phrases frequently (and in titles, headings, alt tags etc). Eliminate broken links. Link to sites that your readers might want to see. Google itself claims to use over 200 factors. You can guess at what some might be (average length of time a visitor stay on the site, geographical location, website suffix, language, speed of response, …) but you'd be hard pressed to guess them all. And remember they might change tomorrow. Even for incoming links there's a bit more to it. For example a link from a site with no other external links is "worth more" to you than a link from a comparable site with a hundred external links. The "value" of a link is divided among all link recipients.
	Link Exchanges Google discourages the use of web-rings and link exchanges since it undermines the principal of the page-rank system, which treats links like votes. Exchanging links is like agreeing to vote for each other. For this reason Google assigns more value to a one-way link. For this reason some webmasters arrange link exchanges with one way links. Eg if I run site A and B and you run site X then I'll link A to X if you link X to C. This favouring of one-way links has also led to a rash of selfish and unprincipled behaviour. For example some webmasters will agree to exchange links but then arrange for Google not to "see" their link by using the nofollow attribute, or creating the link in Javascript, or by removing the link after a week or so.
	Popular Fallacies Fallacy 1 Page Rank is the most important thing for webmasters to track. On October 15, 2009, Google employee Susan Moskwa confirmed that the company had removed PageRank from its Webmaster Tools section. Her post said in part, "We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true." Fallacy 2 By linking to other websites you somehow diminish the value of your own site. This is simply wrong, apparently stemming from a confused idea about links diluting the "value" of a site. If Site X links to Site A and Site B, and then adds a link to site C, then the values of the links to A and B will be diluted, but that does not affect the rating of Site X. As a matter of fact there is some evidence that Google rewards sites for adding outgoing links if they are not reciprocal links. Fallacy 3 If I have a high Google ranking then I should link only to other websites with high page rankings. Again this is simply wrong. The erroneous reasoning seems to be something like this: "If we exchange links then the other party will get more advantage than me. If they gain, then I must lose. So it's better not to exchange links". There seems to be an assumption that this is in mathematical terms a "zero sum game", so if you gain then I must loose. But the system is not zero-sum: both parties gain. There are some people who understand this, but will still adopt a policy of not exchanging links with lower ranked sites. These are presumably the same sad people who in psychology experiments reject the offer of a gift of 10$ if by accepting it they cause a gift of $100 to be made to someone else.		Page Rank "When Google was founded, one key innovation was PageRank, a technology that determined the "importance" of a webpage by looking at what other pages link to it, as well as other data. Today Google uses more than 200 signals, including PageRank, to order websites, and they update these algorithms on a weekly basis. For example, we offer personalized search results based on your web history and location." Quote from Google "We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it's easy doesn't mean it's useful for you as a site owner." Quote from Google Google Webmastter Guidelines
	Manipulating PageRank For search engine optimization purposes, some companies offer to sell high PageRank links to webmasters. 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 and relevant sites to drive traffic and increase a webmaster's link popularity. However, Google has publicly warned webmasters that if they are or were discovered to be selling links for the purpose of conferring PageRank and reputation, their links will be devalued (ignored in the calculation of other pages' PageRanks). The practice of buying and selling links is intensely debated across the Webmaster community. Google advises webmasters to use the nofollow HTML attribute value on sponsored links. Google is concerned about webmasters who try to game the system, and thereby reduce the quality and relevancy of Google search results. The intentional surfer model The original PageRank algorithm reflects the so-called random surfer model, meaning that the PageRank of a particular page is derived from the theoretical probability of visiting that page when clicking on links at random. Real users do not randomly surf the web, but follow links according to their interest and intention. A page ranking model that reflects the importance of a particular page as a function of how many actual visits it receives by real users is called the intentional surfer model. The Google toolbar sends information to Google for every page visited, and thereby provides a basis for computing PageRank based on the intentional surfer model. The introduction of the nofollow attribute by Google to combat Spamdexing has the side effect that webmasters commonly use it on outgoing links to increase their own PageRank. This causes a loss of actual links for the Web crawlers to follow, thereby making the original PageRank algorithm based on the random surfer model potentially unreliable. Using information about users' browsing habits provided by the Google toolbar partly compensates for the loss of information caused by the nofollow attribute. The SERP rank of a page, which determines a page's actual placement in the search results, is based on a combination of the random surfer model (PageRank) and the intentional surfer model (browsing habits) in addition to other factors. Google's rel="nofollow" option In early 2005, Google implemented a new value, "nofollow", for the rel attribute of HTML link and anchor elements, so that website developers and bloggers can make links that Google will not consider for the purposes of PageRank-they are links that no longer constitute a "vote" in the PageRank system. The nofollow relationship was added in an attempt to help combat spamdexing. As an example, people could previously create many message-board posts with links to their website to artificially inflate their PageRank. With the nofollow value, message-board administrators can modify their code to automatically insert "rel='nofollow'" to all hyperlinks in posts, thus preventing PageRank from being affected by those particular posts. This method of avoidance, however, also has various drawbacks, such as reducing the link value of legitimate comments. In an effort to manually control the flow of PageRank among pages within a website, many webmasters practice what is known as PageRank Sculpting - strategically placing the nofollow attribute on certain internal links of a website in order to funnel PageRank towards those pages the webmaster deemed most important. This tactic has been used since the inception of the nofollow attribute, but the technique has been thought by many to have lost its effectiveness.

	Tools Keyword Tool - by Google - identify relevant keywords Xenu Link Checker - find broken links on your website


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