Late last year something went down in the SEO world, literally. It was big and if you are into Internet marketing you would have noticed it. The Google PageRank of large numbers of publishers (gasp!), the ultimate navel gazing tool, took a big hit. Some dropped by two points and some by as much as 5. Should you care? Does it matter? And what is this PageRank business anyway? Keep reading to find out.
PageRank is Google's view of the importance of this Page
Google Toolbar
I will offer a "brief" analysis of a somewhat lengthy problem. Not everybody got hit; just a large enough percentage for the differences to be noticed. First I will define what PageRank is (hopefully in an interesting fashion), then I will critique its use by Internet marketers and SEO practitioners.
To some people the news contained in this article is "extremely" old news. Then again, in January Google updated their PageRank again, as they usually do every three months -- so they are about due once again. It looks as if it is business as usual in the Googleplex and there is little or no fear of another huge PR upheaval as there was in November of last year.
PageRank
PageRank is a patented algorithm written by Larry Page (Page-Rank). It is a trademark registered to Google. It is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. According to Google "PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value." In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links, a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
Another thing we should briefly look at is the fact that the PageRank that is most viewed (the green indicator on the toolbar) is an historical indicator that does not change in real time. Instead, it is updated about every three months. Therefore it is only representative of the real Google PageRank at that point in time. According to one blogger, PageRank is one of those things that everyone uses but nobody really understands.
I won't delve too deeply into the mathematics of the algorithm. Anyone who is interested in it should take a look at Wikipedia's page on it. However I will look at how SEO practitioners and Internet marketers used SEO in such a way as to turn PageRank into one of their marketing points, and how eventually it created a competing model against Google's pay-per-click ad model.
Google Optimization 
