Rank Fast with these Topical Authority Tactics Ep.589
In this podcast episode featuring SEO Specialist Matthew Bertram, the focus is on demystifying Topical Authority in SEO and providing actionable…
Link Building
Google PageRank Explained for SEO Beginners Ep. 574
PageRank, created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, remains embedded in Google's systems today even though the public toolbar was removed in 2016, and understanding it is foundational for SEO.
Key takeaways
- PageRank scores a page by summing fractions of link equity passed from all pages linking into it, iterated until equilibrium.
- The public PageRank toolbar was withdrawn by 2016, but Google engineers still have internal access to the score.
- Spreading your website across too many topic categories dilutes your PageRank and domain authority across too many pages.
- Newer pages start with zero inbound links and therefore low PageRank, which is why Google uses freshness signals separately.
- A leak of the Yandex source code showed PageRank remained a factor, suggesting Google likely still uses a form of it.
About this episode
PageRank is a Google algorithm for ranking pages based on the flow of authority via links, created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Every SEO pro should have a good grasp of what PageRank was, and what it still is today.
Questions this episode answers
What is Google PageRank and how does it work?
PageRank is an algorithm created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin that scores web pages based on the combined relative strengths of all hyperlinks pointing to them. Each page passes a fraction of its score to pages it links to, and the calculation is iterated across the entire web until it reaches an equilibrium.
Is Google PageRank still used today?
Although public access to PageRank was removed in 2016, it is believed the score is still available to search engineers within Google. A leak of the Yandex source code showed PageRank remained a factor, and Google engineers have suggested the original form was replaced with a new approximation requiring less processing power.
What was the PageRank toolbar and why was it removed?
The PageRank toolbar publicly displayed a page score from zero to ten. It was withdrawn by 2016 because it made links the easiest way to game Google, fueling a secondary market for buying and selling links valued on the PageRank of the URL where the link appeared.
What was Google originally called before it became Google?
While Page and Brin were at Stanford, their search engine was known as BackRub. PageRank was the algorithm it used to rank pages in the search engine results pages. The paper describing the algorithm was published in January of 1999.
In their words
Google spent many years encouraging SEO professionals away from manipulating links through its Google guidelines, right? That's the documentation and through advice from its spam team headed by Matt Cuts.
Host
Regardless of what other algorithms Google might choose to call upon page rank likely remains embedded in many of the search giants systems to this day.
Host
Terms defined in this episode
- PageRank
- An algorithm based on the combined relative strengths of all the hyperlinks on the internet, created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, historically presented as a score between zero and 10.
- Damping factor
- A component of the PageRank formula described as the chance that a person surfing the web might stop surfing altogether, used to help the iterative calculation reach equilibrium.
- Google dance
- The erratic movement of pages up and down in Google search results during the early days when the PageRank math took several days to process iteratively. It later became the name of Google's annual party for SEO experts in Mountain View.
- Link equity
- The PageRank value passed from one page to another through hyperlinks, divided by the number of outbound links on the source page and distributed to all linked pages.
Full transcript is being added.
This episode answers
Matthew Bertram
AI keynote speaker · Owner & CEO, EWR Digital · President, ModalPoint
Matthew Bertram is an AI keynote speaker, creator of DIG™ (Digital Information Governance), and owner and CEO of EWR Digital. He helps energy and industrial leaders win visibility in AI search (GEO and AEO), is President of ModalPoint and CMO of the Oil & Gas Global Network, hosts The Best SEO Podcast, and has authored eight books including LLM Visibility. More about Matthew Bertram.
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