What is PageRank?
The famous PageRank bar.
PageRank was patented by Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they founded Google way back in 1998.
It is an algorithm that determines how popular a website is, assigning a ranking to a page depending on how likely a user is likely to come across it by randomly clicking links on the website. A simple explanation is that it shows how popular a page is in terms of the popularity and volume of the pages that link to it.
Many within the SEO industry think that it is an outdated metric to use due to the availabilty of more complex and detailed tools, but it’s still a useful indicator as to Google’s perceived popularity of a site – particularly for the hobbyist that doesn’t have access to professional tools.
Why do older sites tend to have a higher PageRank?
This was a question I was asked today, and in my opinion, the answer is not as obvious as it seems. Some believe that the older a site is, the more trust it gains from Google and therefore the higher PageRank it achieves.
This answer isn’t strictly true. You cannot gain PageRank without having any links, and therefore it isn’t just the age of a site that correlates to higher PageRank.
From my understanding of PageRank, I believe that the answer stems from the popular Six Degrees of Separation phenomenon.
Ten years ago, the internet did not have as many websites as it does now. Therefore, if you had a few links to your website then you were more likely to be a few links away (or degrees of separation away) from a popular website. This means that if someone randomly clicked around the web then they were more likely to land on your website.
Thus it was easier to gain PageRank – and the PageRank would increase over time as a consequence of being a few degrees of separation away from a popular website that has had ten years to increase its popularity (in terms of links).
This is why older sites tend to have higher PageRank – as long as they have a few links.
What is the future of PageRank?
Google’s long-established algorithm is under threat from Social Media-based alternatives. For example, Facebook’s Open Graph is perceived to be a threat to Google’s PageRank algorithm, with an alternative algorithm based on how many people ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ a page.
I don’t believe that this is a viable competitor at present, as the strength of Google’s algorithm is that it is very difficult to ‘cheat the system’ or manipulate results. Facebook’s Open Graph looks to be very open to these problems at present.
However, it’s only a matter of time before there is a big change in the way search engines return results. The question is whether Google will be the ones to make it.
