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One of the core principles that the entire Google search engine was founded on was the notion that links from one page to another were kind of like votes in an election.  By linking to another page you were saying that the other page was important.  The more links a page had, the more important that page was presumed to be.  It was more popular.

Also, if a page was really popular itself, then its vote should count more when it links out to another page.  So, the more links a page had pointing to it, the more powerful its outbound links would be.  Google invented a way to measure all of this and called it PageRank.  The term PageRank is a trademarked term that Google invented to represent that link power that exists on the internet.

Google created a scale of zero to ten to measure PageRank.  Ten is the highest and zero is the lowest measurable amount.  Real PageRank is not measured on a scale of zero to ten.  That scale is just an easier way to look at it.

A page that shows as PR0 on the scale does not actually have zero PageRank.  It just has a very tiny amount.  Every page that exists in Google’s index has at least a small amount of PageRank.  If the page really had no PageRank at all, then it would get removed from Google’s index.  It would never be found in the search results and its links to other pages would be completely worthless.  This is why it is important to get your pages indexed in Google.  If they aren’t indexed then they are essentially worthless.

The ten point scale is not linear.  A PR10 link is about six times more powerful than a PR9 link which is about six times more powerful than a PR8 link and so on.  Think of it like an earthquake Richter Scale.  One point higher represents a lot more power.

The link power flows from one page to the next through hyperlinks.  It loses about 15 percent of its power every time it passes from one page to another.  This is done on purpose for mathematical reasons.  That link juice is also divided up between all the links that leave that page.  So, if a page had PR5 and it had 5 outbound links total on that page, then each link would get twenty percent of the outbound link power.  If that same page had one hundred outbound links then each link would only get one percent of the power.  So the number of outbound links on a page matters a lot.

How Come Everyone Says Google PageRank Doesn’t Matter

When people say that Google PageRank doesn’t matter, they are talking about how much internal Google PageRank your pages have and your website has.  They say it doesn’t matter because you will see a PR0 page outranking a page with PR3 or PR4.  Therefore, they assume that the PageRank is not a big factor in the ranking process for your pages.

Here is where they are wrong though:

The PageRank of the links that point back to your pages make a huge difference.  That PageRank matters a lot.  If you get a few links from high PageRank pages you can easily outrank someone else’s competing page that has hundreds of PR0 links pointing at it.  That is why PageRank does matter.

PageRank also matter because it can make your own website a much more powerful source of link juice.  If your homepage has a lot of Google PageRank, then you can use your homepage to link to another page on your site that you want to get ranked really well.  Try it and you will see what I mean.  Go create a link from your homepage to some other internal page that is deep on your website.  Use the ideal anchor text to create the link.  Then watch your internal page shoot up in the search results.  It works.

High PageRank links are much harder to come by.  This is why people charge so much money for them.  When people buy links they are generally interested in buying links that have high PageRank values.  They know that it does matter.

Summary of Google PageRank and Why It Matters

It is important because the higher a page’s PR rating is, the more powerful a link from that page is.    That link power makes a huge difference when you are trying to get the pages on your website to rank higher in the search results.

So PageRank is an important measurement of how powerful a link is.  It is very important to learn and understand that.