Visible PageRank is the approximate PageRank measure from 1 to 10 which Google displays in the Google toolbar for Internet Explorer browsers.
You can go to Google and download the toolbar free.
Under the word "PageRank", the toolbar displays a little green strip. The higher the PageRank, the longer the strip. When you place your cursor of it, a pop-up box tells you the PageRank number.
(If you're using Mozilla Firefox browser, which I do, you can get a free SearchStatus plugin which displays both Google PageRank and Alexa rankings.)
The difference between visible PageRank and REAL PageRank confuses many people.
Here's an email I received:
Hey... I don't get it. What's VISIBLE Page Rank
as opposed to the Page Rank that's working all
the time? I don't understand? Have I missed
something? All I know is that I've been
gradually increasing our links, but it hasn't
made ONE BIT of difference to our Page Rank, so
what am I missing here?
Google calculates REAL PageRank frequently.
However, it updates VISIBLE PageRank - the approximate measure you see in the Google toolbar - only sporadically. It used to update it about once a month but as I write this in 2005 it's updating it only about once every three months.
So you can get a hundred good links to your site and visible PageRank won't change one iota - until Google decides to update it.
Debates over PageRank
Search engine optimization experts love to debate the importance of PageRank. Some make extraordinary claims.
Everything else being equal, the higher your PageRank, the more likely your page will rank well in Google. It may also rank well in Yahoo! and MSN.
Google explains PageRank
Here's how Google explains PageRank. It says that PageRank is "the heart" of its software.
"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," Google says. "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'.
"Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query."
In short, one of the most efficient ways to boost your rankings in search engines is to get links to your site from related sites which have a lot of links to them.
Google quality engineer Matt Cutts gave this explanation in an article he wrote:
PageRank evaluates two things: how many links there are to a web page from other pages, and the quality of the linking sites. With PageRank, five or six high-quality links from websites such as www.cnn.com and www.nytimes.com would be valued much more highly than twice as many links from less reputable or established sites.
A page that has a high PageRank won't always beat a page with a lower PageRank. Matt Cutts explains why:
As a rule, Google tries to find pages that are both reputable and relevant. If two pages appear to have roughly the same amount of information matching a given query, we'll usually try to pick the page that more trusted websites have chosen to link to. Still, we'll often elevate a page with fewer links or lower PageRank if other signals suggest that the page is more relevant.
PageRank tips
The 0-10 scale is logarithmic. It's fairly easy to get 3 or 4. It may take you a year to two to get a 6 or 7.
The usefulness of getting links from pages with a high Google PageRank diminishes if there are a large number of links on the linking page.
It may be difficult to achieve, but ideally you want people to link to you from high PageRank pages that contain a small number of links - five or less, if possible.
One way to achieve this is to persuade someone to link to you from within an article. If you create a genuinely useful, interesting site - or an outrageous one - people provide such links without being asked.
Super affiliate James Martell directs PageRank to important pages. By linking to a small number of select pages within each site, he harnesses the power of PageRank, making those pages more likely to rank highly in Google.
You can direct PageRank to any page you consider important, such as a page promoting a good-paying affiliate product, your newsletter signup page, or a page which contains valuable phrases, paying well in AdSense.
You can waste an awful lot of time worrying about the details involved with this - time which would probably be better spent adding useful, interesting, keyword-rich articles to your site and getting links from related sites.
