I opened my feed reader today and found about ten posts mentioning that the PageRank update is in progress. It’s nice to finally have a number set in stone but the reality is nothing much is going to change as far as your search engine rank goes.
The PageRank value you see when you use an online PR checker or toolbar does not directly relate to how you rank in search engine results pages. It’s more of a rough guide, and reflects changes to your search engine rank that have already been made.
Danny from Search Engine Land has written a comprehensive article on PageRank and in it he points out the difference between the PageRank you see on toolbars and Google’s undisclosed internal PageRank.
Internal PageRank are the PageRank scores that Google uses as part of its ranking algorithm. Those scores are constantly being updated. In contrast, the PageRank scores that Google allows the world to see — Toolbar PageRank — is a snapshot of internal PageRank taken every few months.
It’s easy to get fixated on PageRank but it’s important to keep in mind it is only one of many factors Google uses to determine your rank in search results pages.
There are two other points Danny brings up in his article which are worth mentioning.
- Having a high PageRank does not mean you will rank high in search results pages for any given term.
- The anchor text of a link is often more important than whether the linking website has a high PageRank.
The best strategy then is to concentrate on getting links from websites relevant to your own, who already rank highly in search results pages for the keywords you want to rank for.