How’s your page rank? Better question yet, how’s your PageRank?
You’re forgiven if you don’t know the answers, or don’t even know what PageRank is. But Search Engine Optimization Consultants know, and over the last few weeks Google’s dropped their own PageRank, then raised it again. SEO Consultants are scratching their heads on how and why that would happen, but I think I know the answer:
Google’s afraid of anti-trust legislation being threatened by the United States Congress, and their PageRank fluctuations are a misdirect. And a pretty clever one at that.
PageRank is one of the things that makes it worthwhile for you to hire an SEO Consultant, by the way. Google assigns every page it knows about on the Internet a score from 1 to 10 (or assigns no rank at all, a de facto “PageRank Zero”), and getting to each successive rank is exponentially more difficult than the previous one. And your rank determines … how important a link from you is to everyone else.
Stop for a second and think about that. PageRank doesn’t actually mean much of anything to your ability to rank highly in search engines. It instead controls how important a link FROM you TO someone else is in Google’s estimation of that other site’s importance by virtue of having received a link from you.
Which is enough to make your head explode, right? Here’s the thing: if you have a high PageRank it might not help you as much as it does everyone else, but if you have a high enough PageRank it’s a sign that you matter.
Last year, I wrote a white paper on Google’s Secret Sauce. I explained PageRank a bit, and told you that Google was one of just a few websites that Google itself had assigned a PageRank of 10 (see page 4 of the White Paper for that information). A few weeks ago, Google’s PageRank dropped to 9, which makes no sense; Google draws over 7% of ALL Internet traffic.
Now, Google’s back up to a PageRank of 10. That’s fine, and obviously as it should be. What’s amazing to we SEO types is that this happened so quickly; in general Google only updates PageRank scores once or twice each year. So why is Google back to a PageRank 10 so quickly after becoming a PageRank 9?
It’s not exactly ego, although that would make sense. Imagine if you were Google and realized that your search engine algorithm had somehow dropped you from 10 to 9. You’d tweak things to fix that, right?
Or, try this one on: Google is coming under increasing anti-trust scrutiny by the United States Congress. What if they could claim that even they, Google, are subject to the same whims as anyone else when it comes to how their software sees them?
Yes, Mr. Senator, of course we “should” get a PageRank 10, but as you can see, our software made us a 9 for a few weeks in June and July 2011. Anti-trust violation? What anti-trust violation? It’s all software, not monopolistic business practices!
Smart dudes, those Googloids.
Understanding a bit more about why you need to understand Google and Search Engine Optimization?
I personally don’t agree. I think it was just some experimental algorithms that didn’t go over so well that needed correcting.
A ton of people have been receiving crazy fluctuations in PR including myself.
With that being said, there’s really no way to know one way or the other.
It’s like the classic moon landing debate. You can believe one way or another, but you can’t possibly know for sure unless you were there landing on the moon yourself.
It’s silly, but Google has become so huge that it has built conspiracy and even urban legend.
Whether anything shady is going or not it is usually always obscured by mans nature of creating a boogeyman or a bad guy.
Thanks, Bryan
Bryan, I hear you, and sure, the rush to blame is a powerful one.
But I also find it hard to believe that anything “normal” could happen at Google to cause that; they’re GOOGLE, for goodness sake. A nine? REALLY?
Of course, we’ll never “know”, right?
Like most companies, we’ll probably never know a lot about the inner workings and ingredients, if Google has a direct information feed to the Government an so forth.
As long as you’re on the level there is really nothing to worry about.
Also, a heads up. On Firefox 5 (so probably other versions as well) your Sexy Bookmarks plugin is causing a huge gap between your content and the comments.
The culprit is:
height:100%
You might try:
.shr-bookmarks{height:100px !important}
Thanks, Bryan
Thanks for commenting again, Bryan. And also for the Firefox5 catch . . . on it . . .
To each their own. One man’s truth is another man’s shaky rumor or conspiracy theory.
Also, I wasn’t completely directing the statement at you, there were some other things I read that I forget now…
Thanks, Bryan
I really hope Google will keep the PR update frequency. It is good for all, site owners have more ideas about how they should develop their sites and advertisers know which site will be suitable and credible enough for them. Do you have the same opinions with me?
Sudha, I agree that Google should be more transparent about how their search stuff works, so yeas, as long as they are maintaining PageRank at all, I do!
conspiracy? no, sir. BUSINESS. It be what it be