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Google uses many factors in order to evaluate web pages, as well as rank them in their search engine results pages (SERPs), and one of those factors is PageRank. It was developed by the founders of Google, while they were working on “Backrub,” which was their search engine research project.

Not many people know this, but the word “page” in “PageRank” derived from Larry Page’s last name, and not from “web page,” which is what many people wrongly believe.

More Links More PR

PageRank is also known as PR, and basically it is an indicator of how important a web page is. It is actually based on Sergey Brin’s concept that pages could be arranged via “link popularity”.

Basically, a web page would get a better PR as more sites linked to it. A PR0 is not important at all, while a PR10 is very important.

So, why would a page with more links leading to it get a higher PR than  a page that does not have many links? One of the rationalizations behind it is that if people enjoy the content on a specific web page, then they will naturally recommend it to others. It is kind of like a vote for the web page.

If a web page has many links, then it is considered important. Essentially, the more sites that link to it, the more important it will become. If the sites linking to the web page are unique and they are high PR sites, then those links will be considered more important than links coming from low PR sites.

Where Did It Come From

By now you may be wondering how Brin and Page came up with the idea of PageRank. Page actually needed a dissertation theme while he was a candidate for a PhD. This led Page to think about the World Wide Web, and the connection between the mathematical properties and links.

Sergey Brin eventually joined Page, and they worked on a project dubbed “Backrub”. During this period of time, they worked on developing a web crawler, and the crawler gathered the data of backlinks. Eventually the two developed a distribution algorithm, which was designed to analyze the data that was gathered by the crawler.

This was done in order to measure how important a web page was based on how many links, as well as the nature of the links, linked to it. The name PageRank was the name they decided to give the algorithm.

Google Search Engine Born

The pair then decided to build a search engine prototype, which was actually the first version of Google. In 1996, the Google search engine was available to use via the Stanford University’s website. In 1998 a paper discussing Backrub was published, and it was co-authored by a professor of computer science at the university.

Even to this day PR is the basis for all of the web search tools offered by Google. Also, you should remember that PR and links are not the only things that will determine your web pages’ rankings. In matter of fact, there are more than 100 factors that Google takes into consideration, and all off the factors play a role in how well your web page will rank. Just keep in mind that PR is not everything.

Why Bother With Page Rank

Now you may be wondering if PR is not the be-all and end-all of search engine optimization, why should you even bother with it? That’s a good question, but we do have an answer for you. The reason why you should bother with PR is because we all know that it is one of the many factors that search engines take into consideration when ranking pages.

We really do not know much about the 100+ factors that search engines look at when ranking sites. If you want to increase the chances of appearing in a good spot on the Google SERPs, then you should take PR seriously. If you don’t, then you could end up with a site that does not rank as good as it could have if you focused a little bit on PR.

One of Google’s original concerns was creating the most comprehensive search engine available, an engine that could deliver results in mere seconds.

To make that goal even harder, Google extended the goal beyond common searchable subjects and into the most obscure subjects anyone could think of.

Anything from underwater basket weaving pointers, ghosts that burp, the best spoon player ever.

There’s really no end to what Google can search for and deliver. The Google Algorithm made this goal achievable.

The Algorithm Explained

The Google algorithm uses search engine result pages (SERPs) to compute the relevance of page content for each query.

This process requires that Google constantly update the algorithm to provide the newest, most relevant content for each query.

The constant change is the only way that Google can provide people the world over with the most accurate information for each search engine query. Otherwise, people violate the search engine format with page rank manipulation techniques and any other number of unethical actions.

The Early Days Of Google

In the early days of the search engine development process, Google utilized page rank more than anything else.

Developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Stanford University, page rank was a crucial step in the evolution of the ranking process.

However, page rank became a determinant to ranking web pages. That’s because it was easy for people to manipulate their page rankings.

However, Google quickly caught on to the unfair manipulations and that’s when the algorithm became crucial to the success of the company and in a way, to the success of the Internet.

After a series of refinements including the Google algorithm, page rank no longer holds the massive influence it once did, though its importance has not completely diminished.

In addition to relying on the highly sophisticated algorithm, Google also personalizes each query’s results by keeping track of the user’s web history and location. Google also uses human reviewers to keep a sharp eye on the overall process.

Changes In Algorithm

The algorithm underwent a massive change in the first quarter of 2011 when Google began to focus on the quality of the content it provided. Google didn’t want to just provide relevant content, but well-written content.

Therefore, Google mandated that content should not contain grammar/spelling errors and that all articles need to contain well organized, original content. That means that website sites full of gibberish don’t stand a chance, and the focus of any article should be the human reader rather than a web bot. Other key points for content include:

• No malware
• No phishing, and/or
• No web spam

When Google discovers a website that violates any of the above criteria, Google de-indexes the site. It also blocks the site in order to ensure an optimum user experience.

Many web content providers have had to completely redo their  article creating process. This means they must now not only hire qualified writers, but they must know what constitutes spam. Spam means:

• Keyword stuffing
• Pages with useless content
• Pure pay per click (PPC) pages, and/or
• Scraped or copied content.

Any of the above constitutes a violation of Google’s goal.

Looking Forward To The Future

Meta tags on the page still present a problem for Google, at least in terms of popular opinion. Some people believe that Google ignores the meta tag words because in the early days, meta tag words made Google searches susceptible to rank manipulation. Bing successfully uses meta tags so how Google decides to deal with meta tags remains to be seen.

One thing that remains important to Google are back links to a web page.  Back links provide an important component of search engine optimization (SEO) writing that Google cannot afford to ignore.

A website must steadily work on getting other websites to link back to it. However, websites do not want to link back to sites that use any of the aforementioned spam tactics or that have low rankings.

These concerns require a constant struggle for balance and awareness, and is one reason why Google constantly changes it algorithm. But the struggle and the future portends  unimaginable promise and potential.

Overall, the Google algorithm had opened up the Internet and in turn, the world.

When you see SEO, that means Search Engine Optimization. It involves making your website search engine friendly, and making it rank well on organic search results(sometimes referred to as natural search results).

Goal Of SEO

The ultimate goal is to get onto the first page of natural (organic) search results, preferably at the very top position.

All the things that you can do to get those high rankings you are seeking for your web pages is what SEO is all about.

Those just getting going in these matters may be wondering why their website should be optimized for search engines, and really what these search engines are all about. Let us then begin with talk about search engines.

What Exactly Are Search Engines?

The search engines we are concerned with here are web search engines, and these are what one seeking internet information will use.

We enter into the search engine exactly what it is we are looking for, and it will bring up to us results with related information presented in files, images or web pages.

The search engines must first have to have the information in their data bases, in order to produce such results. Programs automatically browsing web pages on the internet is how this information is gathered.

These programs are called blots, spiders or web crawlers; web pages are retrieved by them and through the use of algorithms their content is analyzed.

Then, in the index database of the search engine, the data gets stored. When a web search is conducted by us, the search engine seeks information in its index database which best matches what it is we are seeking, and then on the search engine results page (SERPs), they are displayed.

The Three Major Search Engines

There are three major search engines and they are Bing, Yahoo! and Google.

The largest market share belongs to Google, and at the end of 2010, according to StatCounter Global Stats, that stood at 91%. Google Inc., founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, own the Google search engine. In 2004, Google Inc. which was first incorporated in 1998, became a public corporation.

Next in the ranking, with about a market share of 4% at the end of 2010, is Yahoo!, which Yahoo Inc. owns. David Filo and Jerry Yang founded Yahoo in 1994 and then incorporated the next year, 1995.

Yahoo! and Microsoft, in 2009, made the announcement that Yahoo! Search would be powered by Bing. In Canada and the United States, the transition to the Bing search engine is now completed.

Bing, which is owned by Microsoft, was formerly known as MSN Search, Windows Live Search and Live Search. In 2009, it was first launched, and by the end of 2010 held about a 3% share, as per the report issued by StatCounter Global Stats. It is expected that by the end of 2012, the transition to the Bing search engines by Yahoo! Search will be completed.

The Beginnings of SEO

It was around the mid-1990s that SEO had it’s beginnings, when the value of web pages appearing on search results was realized by webmasters.

They began to submit to search engines URLs so that their pages could be indexed and crawled. It was in 1997 that the term Search Engine Optimization was first used, on the Multimedia Marketing Group website.

It was on keyword meta tags and keyword density that the early search engines relied, and so manipulating rankings was simple; One simply had to put into the mega tags the targeted keywords, and then many times into the content of webpages insert those keywords to optimize them for the search engines.

Positive user experience did not result from this, so different measures were sought out to try and avoid search engine manipulations that only considered for their rankings on-page factors.

By 2004, to reduce the impact of manipulation, search engines brought in a wide range of factors undisclosed in their ranking algorithms.

The algorithms used to rank pages are not revealed by the leading search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing. Google says it now employs more than 200 different factors in ranking web pages.

Why Do SEO?

The value of having their web pages appearing on search results became apparent to webmasters as stated above; the higher the better! So what exactly is the value they took account of?

More traffic is going to be generated by those web pages ranked highly in search engine results. More chances to achieve goals go to those sites generating more traffic.

Among other things this meant increased sales, being able to turn traffic to affiliate sites, and more easily disseminate information (educational websites, non-profit websites), among others.

SEO Factors

Search engine optimization is impacted by two types of factors. These are called Off-Page SEO factors and On-Page SEO factors.

On Page

On-Page SEO is predominately about meta tags, headings, keyword density and links on a web page, and also site structure. As previously mentioned, putting on a page targeted keywords is mostly what SEO is about; for rankings to be good what you had to do was stuff your keywords, even variants misspelled, onto your web page as many times as you can, both into the copy itself and the meta tags.

Since then, search algorithms have matured, and there is now much less value to manipulated relevance indicators like keyword density. For on-page optimization today, the page content has to be good quality, containing correct and useful information and well written, and to the targeted keyword be highly relevant.

While targeted keywords still should be included in the headline tags, image all tags, meta description, meta title and main content, it is advised not to overdo it as already considered web spam is keyword stuffing.

Off Page

Off-Page SEO factors, which to a site involve external links, now hold greater importance than On-Page SEO does. Toward ranking well on the SERPs, links from other sites are vital.

The quantity and quality of links pointing to a site and the text contained in those links are when ranking web pages what the search algorithms are looking for. This is why it is so important to get as many sites as possible linked to our sites.