What factors make Page Rank?

[KidsBeeHappy]

Google Page Rank.

Now I know the old adage about page rank is a reflection of the quality and number of incoming links into your website, link with lots of high PR websites and it will increase yours........

However, there must be more to page rank than that.

My logic being that I put 2 websites live, with no incoming links at all other than 1 on the developers (PR2) website, and both websites went live very shortly after with a PR4, which has never dropped (despite several hundred spammy back links curtesty of smart-traffic).

So. What are the other factors that end up in the pot that determines Page Rank? I'd really love to know.

[NMHancock]

...My logic being that I put 2 websites live, with no incoming links at all other than 1 on the developers (PR2) website, and both websites went live very shortly after with a PR4, which has never dropped...
Were both the domains brand-spanking-new? They weren't previously owned by someone else, who decided to just let the domain de-register?

Neil M Hancock

[KidsBeeHappy]

New & Brand New. Registered for the websites in question. One took about a year from registering to going live. The other was registered about 2 weeks before going live.

[OldWelshGuy]

Page rank is ALL about links and nothing else. Google has two elements
importance
relevance

Inportance is the PR value.

PR comes from the value of the inbound links, where a page can vote (and retain up to 85% of its own PR. So a PR2 page can vote up to PR1.7 to another page. The 15% is the 'dampening factor' of the algorithm.

All pages start with PR1, but Toolbar PR only shows a value above a whole number, and always rounded down. so pr1.0000000001 AND pr 1.9999999999 will show as PR1 even though theya re almost a whole value of PR different.

It is possible to compound PR through a site (which is where the old googledance came from due to the two pass system of calculating PR).

so page 1 links to p2, to p3, to p4 etc, with the PR value compounding as it goes from page to page.

So in short, the PR4 probably came from the PR2 link which then filtered down through the site, and filtered back to the home page compounded


PHEW!

[NMHancock]

New & Brand New. Registered for the websites in question. One took about a year from registering to going live. The other was registered about 2 weeks before going live.
Well you could have opened a can of worms here, as Google have officially stopping telling people how the PageRank is calculated.

Initially the formula was

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))
Basically this means that you get a percentage of the each link coming into your site depending on their PR and the number of outgoing links. So if you had 1 link with a page rank of 2, it would be impossible to get a PR of 4, which also backs up the fact that this formula must have been updated.

I am sure lots of people will put their facts (opinions) forward, but honestly, no one but Mr Cutts himself will be able to give you the answer.

[fisicx]

The wikipedia page is about as good as it gets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagerank.

It's all about probabilities in which the each inbound link is given a value. The more spammy the link the lower the value (it's called damping). Once all the links have been scored a grand total is calculated and that's your page rank.

The calculations are remarkably simple, it's just that there is an awful lot of them which is why G needs a lot of processing power.

The other thing to remember is that the Google engineers can change the damping values to promote or demote certain parameters. So for example they could discount all inbound links from blogs or boost links from .edu sites.

After the machine has been set, everything afterwards is automatic.

[KidsBeeHappy]

It is possible to compound PR through a site (which is where the old googledance came from due to the two pass system of calculating PR).

so page 1 links to p2, to p3, to p4 etc, with the PR value compounding as it goes from page to page.

So in short, the PR4 probably came from the PR2 link which then filtered down through the site, and filtered back to the home page compounded


PHEW!

So depending on your web developer, a website could either have a page rank 2 or 4, depending how they've linked the site internally?

[OldWelshGuy]

Reply to NMHancock

That is fine, but you have ignored the internal link juice. The formula you post applies to each and every page :)

[OldWelshGuy]

So depending on your web developer, a website could either have a page rank 2 or 4, depending how they've linked the site internally?

Yep, it is called PR sculpting stopping it flowing to some pages, while compounding it to others.

[fisicx]

So depending on your web developer, a website could either have a page rank 2 or 4, depending how they've linked the site internally?

Nope. It's mainly about inbound links. The internal links are scored but they are heavily damped to won't contribute very much.

There is a game caleld pagerank sculpting but it won't take long for Google to wise up and negate its effects: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/pagerank-sculpting-parsing-the-value-and-potential-benefits-of-sculpting-pr-with-nofollow

[awebapart.com]

So depending on your web developer, a website could either have a page rank 2 or 4, depending how they've linked the site internally?
One of the most common internal page rank issues is the double home page issue, that is you have a domain.com, and it is that url you get your external inbound links for, but all your website's page's "home" links point to domain.com/index.htm (or index.php, index.asp). That's a bit like saying, externally the most important page is the home page domain.com, but internally we don't think this page is important at all, we think some other page called index.htm is the most important.

The technical term for this double url issue is canonicalisation. The ideal solution is to get your website's page's home links pointing to your preferred domain url like domain.com, but there are other solutions too, including redirects, changing settings in google webmaster tools, etc. Canonicalisation issues can mess up importance and relevance, so they are not just a page rank issue.

[KidsBeeHappy]

Thank you people. Very informative. Live and learn, as always.