PageRank

Updated: 12/29/2017 by Computer Hope
Star icon and Rank spelled out on five cubes.

A PageRank is a trademark of Google and a Stanford University patent developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and began being developed in 1995. PageRank helps sort web pages on the Internet by running them through an algorithm and giving it a numerical weight. This "weight" is then used to sort results when a user uses the Google search engine.

What determines PageRank?

A PageRank is determined by different factors. Although it is not official, the list below contains some factors believed to increase or decrease the overall PageRank.

  1. The most important factor is how many pages link to the page. Pages with higher PageRank values that link to the page give that page a higher value.
  2. The number of keywords matched with the search query, their position on the page, and in some cases, how they are formatted (e.g., bold). Also, keywords matched in the domain and other parts of the page URL (uniform resource locator), like the directory and file, are believed to play a factor.
  3. How often new content and pages are created.
  4. The last time the page was updated.
  5. Outbound links to other pages. Linking to poorly ranked pages, link farms, or having several broken outbound links can reduce the overall PageRank.
  6. The age of the page and domain hosting the page.
  7. How many years has the domain been registered.
  8. How fast the web page loads.

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