Firstly, let me explain what Google PageRank is. It’s an algorithm by which Google measures the relative importance of individual web pages. Most people probably know of Page Rank as the little green bar in the web browser which is part of the Google Toolbar pack.

Page ranking is scored on a scale of 0-10, with zero being the lowest and 10 being top of the class. Very, very few pages actually achieve a 10. The score on the Google Toolbar isn’t the actual ranking of the page - no one but Google knows the exact algorithm used to calculate page rank but it is thought that it updates page rank information every 3 months. It is widely said that the ranking gauge on the Google Toolbar does not show current data.

The aim of the search engines is to provide relevant content to their users. For this reason alone they keep their ranking methods close to their chests and make frequent changes.

I have read many times over that people become obsessed with Page rank. Infact, they probably become more obsessed with the toolbar pagerank that the actual position of their pages in the search results. For this reason alone many people believe that the Google Toolbar version of page rank is simply a gimmick. One that has created a lot of fuss and speculation.

Not only do people get obsessed with page rank but it also creates sense of pride, envy and increased prices for sales of links. As daft as it sounds, those same two things that pay you more money for having “good pagerank”, can just as easily cause your pagerank to decrease.

Google tries to discourage the sale of links to increase page rank by penalising people of sell links. If you buy a text link on a page with good PageRank, and use a keyword rich anchor text for the link, it boosts the web page you are advertising for that keyword phrase. This is an obvious manipulation of the search results - which is why Google is discouraging and penalising sites who participate in such activity.

However, all this being said, Google Page Rank is still a real world ranking criteria that determines search engine results. However, this is Google’s real Page Rank, and not the Toolbar Page Rank.

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