PageRank is the name of the link analysis algorithm that Sergey Brin and Larry (Lawrence) Page invented at Stanford University, and it is also the formula that led to the founding of Google.
Many mistakenly believe that PageRank is no longer part of Google’s algorithms. It is important to understand that PageRank is one of Google’s cornerstones and a fundamental part of the search engine.
In simple terms, the formula assigns numerical values to hyperlinks in order to measure a page’s relative importance. In other words, PageRank is a popularity algorithm based on referral analysis.
It was Larry himself who lent his name to the formula, hence the name PageRank. It is not called PageRank because the value covers an entire website. PageRank accumulates on all pages of a website that Google has access to, and not at the domain level.
Many people unfortunately believe otherwise, and this misconception makes understanding PageRank much more complicated than it actually is. PageRank is applied at the page level, which means there is no such thing as, for example, a PageRank-4 domain. Instead, it would be a website with a homepage that has a PageRank of 4 – it’s not the domain itself.
The formula in its original form distributes weight equally among the links on a page, regardless of whether they are internal or external links. For example, if you have 10 outbound links on a page, each link transfers 10% of the PageRank value that you have the potential to transfer.
How is PageRank Calculated?
The link value that a page can pass on is calculated as follows: Value of PageRank + PageRank from sources x 0.85 / number of links on the page in question.
