PageRank is a numeric value that denotes how important a page is on the web.

• When one page links to another page it is effectively casting a vote for the other page.
• The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page is.
• Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is.

Google calculates a page's importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is, is taken into account when a page's PageRank is calculated. PageRank is Google's way of deciding a page's importance. PR is one of the important factors that determines a page's ranking in the Google search results.

How to measure Page Rank ?

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We can download the google Toolbar and install on our System. The PR values between PR1 and PR10 (the maximum) and are set on a logarithmic scale.According to Google, the billions of pages on the web average out to a PageRank of 1.0 per page.

The Google toolbar range is from 1 to 10. What Google does, is divide the full range of actual PageRanks on the web into 10 parts - each part is represented by a value as shown in the toolbar. So the toolbar values only show what part of the overall range a page's PageRank is in, and not the actual PageRank itself. The numbers in the toolbar are just labels.

The PR is talked in the sense of overall PageRank in the site and not the PageRank of any individual page.

Not All Pages to be linked
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Not all links are counted by Google. For instance, they filter out links from known link farms. Some links can cause a site to be penalized by Google. They rightly figure that webmasters cannot control which sites link to their sites, but they can control which sites they link out to. For this reason, links into a site cannot harm the site, but links from a site can be harmful if they link to penalized sites. So be careful which sites you link to. If a site has PR0, it is usually a penalty, and it would be unwise to link to it.

When will Google show PR ?

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A page will be included in the Google index only if one or more pages on the web link to it. If a page is not in the Google index, any links from it can't be included in the calculations.

How to increase Page Rank ?

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Number of Pages in a site

The more pages that a site has, the more PageRank it has.

Add New Pages

Adding new pages to a site is an important way of increasing a site's total PageRank

Internal links

Internal links can be arranged to suit a site's PageRank needs, but it is only useful if Google knows about the pages, so do try to ensure that Google spiders them.

Good Linking

By good linking, we can achieve a site's full potential and by poor linking, it is quite easy to waste PageRank.

Inbound links

Links into the site from the outside are one way to increase a site's total PageRank. Where the links come from doesn't matter. Google recognizes that a webmaster has no control over other sites linking into a site, and so sites are not penalized because of where the links come from.

Outbound links

Outbound links are a drain on a site's total PageRank. They leak PageRank. To counter the drain, we must ensure that the links are reciprocated. Because of the PageRank of the pages at each end of an external link, and the number of links out from those pages, reciprocal links can gain or lose PageRank. You need to take care when choosing where to exchange links.