PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that 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 must be. 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. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page's ranking in the search results. It isn't the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.Take a look at the equation below.
PR(A) = (1-d) + d{PR(t1)/C(t1)} + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))
In the equation 't1 - tn' are pages linking to page A, 'C' is the number of outbound links that a page has and 'd' is a damping factor, usually set to 0.85.A page "votes" an amount of PageRank onto each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank that it has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value * 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to.Note that when a page votes its PageRank value to other pages, its own PageRank is not reduced by the value that it is voting. The page doing the voting doesn't give away its PageRank and end up with nothing. It isn't a transfer of PageRank. It is simply a vote according to the page's PageRank value. It's like a shareholders meeting where each shareholder votes according to the number of shares held, but the shares themselves aren't given away.

...and what is posting information that is available in about a million spots supposed to accomplish?

Originally Posted by marketraise2007

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

42 is also a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. I'd tell you which page, but it took me millions of years to figure out 42, and it's Friday.

Originally Posted by marketraise2007

PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that 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 must be. 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. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page's ranking in the search results. It isn't the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.Take a look at the equation below.
PR(A) = (1-d) + d{PR(t1)/C(t1)} + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))
In the equation 't1 - tn' are pages linking to page A, 'C' is the number of outbound links that a page has and 'd' is a damping factor, usually set to 0.85.A page "votes" an amount of PageRank onto each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank that it has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value * 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to.Note that when a page votes its PageRank value to other pages, its own PageRank is not reduced by the value that it is voting. The page doing the voting doesn't give away its PageRank and end up with nothing. It isn't a transfer of PageRank. It is simply a vote according to the page's PageRank value. It's like a shareholders meeting where each shareholder votes according to the number of shares held, but the shares themselves aren't given away.

Wow...

This page rank stuff is all well and good, but what about the lost art of the paragraph?

Hi ... about the dampening factor, I've seen this figure elsewhere, but .85 removes a huge chunk if link influence (i.e., vote). If a reliable estimate, I say it's a deadening, not a dampening, factor. Ugh!

Google data wobbles, maybe a lot. Such huge algorithms seldom meet conventional standards of reliability. Of course, no one knows what the actual data look like. As a result, which gets used most -- google -- is the best we have, like Churchill said about democracy.

Does anyone have an idea when the PRs will be reconsidered by google? Links to my url have increased, relevantly, in the last 3 months. Yahoo, All the Web and Alta Vista puts my non-recip backlinks, which include slashdot, netscape and other PR7+ sites, at 660+; google reports 21.

Mostly wondering.

Originally Posted by drgeorgep

Hi ... about the dampening factor, I've seen this figure elsewhere, but .85 removes a huge chunk if link influence (i.e., vote). If a reliable estimate, I say it's a deadening, not a dampening, factor. Ugh!

That's applied across the board, so it really doesn't affect influence or clout at all. Two pages competing for the same word get the same dampening factor applied, so it's a wash. And in any case, those aren't votes in a legal sense, and the engines aren't democracies; that's just a metaphor.

Originally Posted by drgeorgep

Google data wobbles, maybe a lot. Such huge algorithms seldom meet conventional standards of reliability.

Because of the strain put on their engine, Google uses distributed computing. Some type of load balancer bounces your query against whichever data center is most available at the moment, and they're only "generally" in sync. When you consider the scale - several billion indexed pages and who knows how many queries per second? - it's pretty reasonable to expect minor discrepancies.

Originally Posted by drgeorgep

Does anyone have an idea when the PRs will be reconsidered by google? Links to my url have increased, relevantly, in the last 3 months. Yahoo, All the Web and Alta Vista puts my non-recip backlinks, which include slashdot, netscape and other PR7+ sites, at 660+; google reports 21.

The "external" or "toolbar" PR gets updated three or four times a year, probably a month ago, and means almost nothing. What does matter is the exposure your site gets, and how well it's meeting your goals. Unless your goal is to sell links to people who can't read the writing on the wall, PR is less a factor than how you dress.

Hi ... if dampening is standardized across the board, which is likely, it means nada. There has to be a variable in application and value, else why keep it. Maybe to break dup'd site ties.

Simultaneous execution of the algorithm is a given. As you stable, there at least some variation in the synchronization of "computers" use. Ego, google data is wobbly for a lot of reasons. Wonder why they don't use a Cray or other super computer.

Democracy, said Churchill, isn't much of a way to organization social life, but it's the best way we got. The same can be said of google. You're also right, the Internet is not democracy, more a matrix of totalitarian fiefdoms.

As I wish to attract writers, people able to express themselves and aren't afraid to do so, I need legitimacy. Today, I lunched with a writer, who expressed little interest in my url, until I mentioned and explained uniques, page views and PR. He particularly liked the notice of PR, as it gives a slightly differ take on the notion of popularity than page views -- who knows if anyone reads -- or unique visitors. There are various uses for a lot of stuff, many of those uses not thought.

I read else on this site that a rejigging of the PR is rumored for the end of the quarter.

Thanks.

drgeorge

The formula quoted above was published many years ago. I think it's fair to assume that it (and the way it handles 'damping' factor) has evolved since then.

In any case, PR is (should be?) nothing more than a minor distraction. In my opinion...

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

...and what is posting information that is available in about a million spots supposed to accomplish?

How else would you make it appear you knew exactly what you were talking about??

Well, apart from the idea of making useful, interesting and well informed posts of course, which does involve more work than Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V.

Dammit, Hirst, you're right as usual. How silly of me to question lemming logic.

I'll be in the Relevant Link Exchange forum for three days to punish myself.

Dr. Pollard (you're not the Dr. from the Dave Chappelle "What if the Internet Were a Mall" skit, are you?), the dampening factor really means nothing if, as Forrest suggested, it's applied equally. So I wouldn't worry about it.

You're also right about votes not being equal, but you're right for most of the wrong reasons. There are a number of sites out there which are designed to artificially enhance PageRank by providing "relevant link exchanges", "contextual links", or (insert thoroughly meaningless BS SEO phrase here). None of these issues address the real problem that most sites face: traffic. They're all designed to increase SEO, but none of them are truly designed to increase traffic by any significant number.

Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about, and one that happened this past week. I wrote a blog post about how IBM Sucks because I had some extreme customer service issues with them (not the first time, either).

The day that I posted it, I went into my site stats as any good web geek does and noticed over 50 referrals from blogs.tap.ibm.com . I haven't hyperlinked this site for a reason, which you'll discover if you open a new browser window and try to visit it yourself.

Doesn't work, does it? Server's down? Kind of weird, isn't it? That's because blogs.tap.ibm.com can only be viewed from inside of the IBM network. It has absolutely no SEO benefit as a result, since search engine bots fall well outside of the IBM network. Do I care about the SEO benefit though? Not in the least. I received traffic from the link, and more importantly I received targeted traffic from the link. I know for a fact that at least two separate IBM people in the UK read it; one posted the link to blogs.tap.ibm.com and "James Taylor, an IBM rep, responded. That means IBMers (in the plural) are reading this, and may effect some positive changes in the future. That's worth a buttload more than any SEO link.

The same thing goes for any referrals you may find as the result of emails, nofollowed links, etc. They're all good if they send you traffic without you having to reciprocate, although none of them will affect the vastly misunderstood and overrated PageRank formula.

Originally Posted by drgeorgep

Wonder why they don't use a Cray or other super computer.

They use tens of thousands of cheap computers running Linux and plenty of in-house software. The boxes are much cheaper, there's no software licensing, and a Cray wouldn't handle a fraction of Google's traffic anyway. They could use less of them, but would still need all the distributed technology, and I think the difference in price/powe must work out in favor of the cheap boxes.

He particularly liked the notice of PR, as it gives a slightly differ take on the notion of popularity than page views -- who knows if anyone reads -- or unique visitors. There are various uses for a lot of stuff, many of those uses not thought.[/quote]

If you're not using Google Analytics, you should be. It'll give you at least some idea whether people who land on your pages actually read them.

Have a look at my North Vancouver page. Go ahead, check the green bar. I don't us the Google Toolbar, but the PR checker I know about reports "err." And yet this one page has had about 1,300 unique visitors in the past 30 days. A lot are from Stumble, and a handful from different email servers ( mail.yahoo.com in particular ). I'm starting to get a trickle from Google Images, too, but not too many of those right now.

The point is that PR is a really bad indicator of traffic. I'm a little unhappy that more than 1/4 of my viewers are finding me through search engines. It's great to get the free traffic from them, but if Google folds tomorrow, I don't want to loose all these viewers. What's ironic is that when I find new ways to introduce my photos to people, Google sees this as people chattering about me.

And that's really the best strategy for SEO. It's a bit like dating; if you show too much interest in a girl, that makes you seem desperate and less appealing. If you show a hair too little, ignore her some, that makes you interesting, mysterious, and more attractive. It also tends to make you stand out from all the other guys who just won't stop pestering her.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Well, apart from the idea of making useful, interesting and well informed posts of course, which does involve more work than Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V.

In all fairness, it could be Apple-Copy, Apple-Paste.

Hi ... thanks for the education, gringo and adam wd. The restricted access link is a great example.

What do you suggest to emphasize, when promoting a site?

On a related issue, the google issue is akin to what TV and radio face: essentially, one rating service (Nielson, Arbitron). Good, bad or malicious, broadcasters have to go with what's available. Alternatives don't have gravitas. Usually, what's available wobbles, terribly, and ratings often seem guesses, horribly unreliable at best. No matter, whatever the rating service offers, you gotta work it.

Google's much the same. Sites, for the most part, are forced to use google rules. What it publishes, accurate, precise, reasonable or not, defines the playing field. This means Matt Cutts, et al, can be cocksure or flat-out lie with impunity, at least for now. This means PR, which I agree seems bizarrely implemented, counts. This means visitor counts, uniques or page views, mean little, as google works hard to define any other ad media, except itself and, maybe, msn + yahoo, as illegitimate. In every sense of the word, this is exploitation.

In every exploitive situation, the exploited are increasingly worse off until a viable alternative appears. Viable alternatives may exist, if and when, MSN and Yahoo get their publisher networks in place; it's to the financial viability of these companies, not to mention longevity, to get YPN and MSNPN in place. The up side is the exploitive capacity of google will weaken; failure to cooperate with google will no longer carry the potential downside it does now.

Once in a while, a savvy broadcaster hires a reliable researcher to shadow extant rating services and find the holes. This turns into lots of dollars. This option isn't yet available to those who run web sites. The playing field is too vast, and the current improbability of meaningful regulation makes it unlikely the field will level.

And, yes, to disagree, without rancor, the web is sort of a democracy. Free speech is the axial democratic value. Anyone with a 50 bucks can post a page and go at it, almost with impunity. It takes a 100 million bucks to start a new newspaper or television station, less for a new magazine and a lot less for a new radio station. To paraphrase AJ Liebling, free speech on the web is available to anyone with $50. This is about a democratic the species will get.

Thanks for reading. Take care, and thanks for the insight. And, yes, I'm full of poop and long-winded by nature and nurture.

drgeorgep

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

...That's worth a buttload more than any SEO link.

In an endeavor to understand the true value of Adam's term of reference, I googled "buttload" and came up with what I think is highly valuable information.

1796 MARSHALL W. England I. Glossary (E.D.S.); Butt, a close-bodied cart; as dung-butt..gurry-butt..ox-butt, etc. Butt-load, about six seams.

Not being sure what a "seam" was, I dug deeper and found the following:

"seam: a traditional unit of volume. A seam of grain was 8 bushels: this
would be equivalent to 290.95 liters based on the British Imperial bushel,
or 281.91 liters based on the older U.S bushel."

Basically, a Butt-load is equal to: 48 bushels of grain. Thus, Butt-load varies in value according to the market price of grain.

It was a pain in the Butt-load to find this...butt I think it was worth it.

Nice research, seolman, but how does the Costa Rica / US exchange rate affect the value of a buttload, and where's the best place to look for bushels of grain?

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

Nice research, seolman, but how does the Costa Rica / US exchange rate affect the value of a buttload, and where's the best place to look for bushels of grain?

Well... here a butt-load is referred to as a "trasero-load" and the bushels are comprised of red beans. Local value of a butt-load would be about USD$ 0.94

You weren't kidding about the long-winded thing, Doc. It sounds to me like you just used a whole bunch of big words to illustrate a point that at best barely exists.

Is it just me, or is what the Doc just said completely unintelligible?

Well...intelligible or not...it's a buttload of information.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

Is it just me, or is what the Doc just said completely unintelligible?

You mean I wasn't the only one scratching my head at "Ego, google data is wobbly for a lot of reasons?"