Mar 3

Written by: profitimo
Monday, March 03, 2008

Why Search Engines Rank Web Pages

Search engines strive to produce quality search results for their users. They want to be able to give you exactly what you are looking for at the best quality. One way that the search engines can tell if you have important information for its users is if your page has other pages linking to it. Various other factors come into play to ensure quality search results. 

Number of Links

Although not the most important factor in determining a web page's importance for a specific keyword, it is a popular way of getting up in the rankings. Every newly created page may give away a "page rank point" of about 0.10 or 0.15 in importance. This could be from external or internal links. 

Percentage of Links

More importantly than number of links to a web page, is the number of other links on the page that link to a web page. To determine the amount of distributed "page rank points" to a web page from a link, multiply the total amount of "page rank points" distributed by the percentage of links. 

The Dampening Factor

The dampening factor is the number that is multiplied by the distributed "page rank points" to a specific web page. This is then added to the given "page rank point" of an estimated 0.10 or 0.15. This dampening factor is usually around 0.80 to 0.85 .

Logarithmic Page Ranking Points 

A web page with page ranking of 1 will have 1 page rank point to divide up and distribute. However, a web page with a page ranking of 2 will have 10 times that! And a web page with a ranking of 3 will divide and distribute 100 "page rank points"! This is why it is better to get a link from popular and respected web pages. This is the most important factor in getting higher ranking pages that I have found.

 

The Equation 

Now, it's time to put it all together. Below I will provide a sample equation to which you can plug in numbers to predict your web page's future page ranking. Though the true equations that search engines use are trade secrets and the PageRanks are rounded to integers, this equation should give you a fairly good idea of your web page's future page ranking.

PageRank(YourWebPage) =
(0.15) + (0.85)*{[(#ofYourLinks)*10^(TheirPageRank - 1)]/(Total#OfLinks) + (MorePageRankingPoints)} 

Filters

There are several important filters that each link goes through before distributing "page ranking points". These filters that can hurt or ban your web site include, but are not limited to...

 

Boosters 

There are several things that can boost your rankings in the search engines, too. Some of these are debated, but won't hurt to encourage. Several boosters include...

• KeyWord in the Title Tag and Meta Tags
• KeyWord Towards Top of the Body of the Web Page and in Header Tags
• High Traffic
• Linking Keywords (anchor text)
• Links From Government, Educational, and Well Known Web Sites

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Related Links:

Google's PageRank Basics - By Linkism.com

What is Google PageRank? - by iwebtool

Google's PageRank Explained and How to Make the Most of It - by Phil Craven

Increase Google PageRank - by pagerank-prediction

How PageRank Works and Why the Original PR Formula May be Flawed - by SiFishkin

Google PageRank Lunacy - By Mike Grehan

The Importance of Google PageRank - By hubspot

 Recommended Books:

Google's PageRank and Beyond: The Science of Search Engine Rankings - By Amy N. Langville and Carl D. Meyer

Online Videos:

Increase Google Page Rank

Understand PageRank

Get PageRank the Easy Way

 

Author: Devin Thayer

Contact: vestrite (at) gmail (dot) com

Director of Internet Services, Business Interests - TalkRite Communications; Provides Internet users with basic services and the ability to become a wholesale buyer and reseller of these same services purchasing them at the same price that TalkRite pays for them in many cases. Web Site design and interactive web community development are also key services that TalkRite provides primarily Joomla based web sites.

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