EDITED: 05/10/07
What is Pagerank?
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E) –
via Wikipedia
Google’s description of Pagerank:
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. 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”.
For quite a while, my blog was stuck with a Pagerank of 4 but now it finally made it to a Pagerank of 5. I found out about it last week when I was checking my pagerank using iWebTool’s Pagerank checker. I’m not 100% sure how I was able to increase my Google Pagerank but I do remember doing a couple of things recently that could’ve helped in increasing my blog’s pagerank.
A couple weeks back, I came across an article about increasing a blog’s Google Pagerank. One of the tips that was mentioned was adding a sitemap to your blog or website. Since I didn’t have a sitemap for my blog, I went on and researched on how to create one. Fortunately I came across the Google Sitemaps Generator plugin by Arne Brachold. What this plugin does is it generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. Once I installed and activated the plugin, I created a sitemap for my blog then I submitted and added it into my Google Webmaster Tools dashboard.
I’m no expert but I do hope my experience could help and provide you with additional useful information. I know there are other ways of increasing a site’s pagerank and I’d greatly appreciate it if you can share it with me and my readers.
Check out Pagerank Explained for a more detailed explanation on Pagerank.
EDIT:
I’ve edited the title of this post after I was informed by jhay that Google did it’s regular PR update. I know about the PR updates but it didn’t dawn on me that my Pagerank increased because of the update, I totally forgot about the PR updates. Anyways, I also confirmed this after I read the article on PinoyTechBlog – Google PR Update Underway?.
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December 26th, 2009 at 5:52 am
Hi
increasing my page rank is what I’m concentrating on. Thanks for the good post
May 14th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
@fruityoaty – Ei, long time no see! I also thought that when I first posted this entry but I later found out that it was actually due to a Google Pagerank update that my blog’s pagerank increased. However, I do believe that the sitemap and the plugin can help in a way. :)
For your blog, I believe that you added more quality backlinks and after the update, your pagerank increased. Yeah, it does depend on the blogger’s purpose or goal. Not everyone are or should be conscious about pagerank.
May 14th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
I did install that plugin about 2 months ago and I went from a PR of 2 to 4, but I don’t really know if that plugin had anything to do with it because I don’t know much about SEO. Well, not complaining. I don’t really bother too much with PR and getting links and all that blog SEO jazz, but I guess I should start learning about all that stuff. I guess I’m happy with the amount of readers I do have. Quality as opposed to quantity. I suppose I’d start caring if I was thinking of blog $$$, lol. Well, maybe one day.
May 13th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
@Cesky – Wow, that’s a really great achievement for your blog! Good for you. I wish I knew about this principle when I first started my blog so I could’ve established good links. I hope my blog also gets mentioned by a famous blogger.
Thanks for dropping by! :)
@benj – Cool! Congratulations man, hope your blog continues it’s success. :D
May 13th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
I was also promoted from zero to 4! Yay for Google! *cartwheels*
May 13th, 2007 at 12:11 am
My blog is only about three months old but my pagerank has climbed to 5 from 0. Some of my dad’s pro-blogger friends attribute it to good links, especially those on blogs that have pageranks of 5 and up. I got my boost when Lorelle VanFossen, Wordpress blogger of bloggers, cited my blog in one of her posts. :)
May 12th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
@Jeff – Let me know if it helps you increase your Google Pagerank or helps your blog in any way. :)
May 11th, 2007 at 7:47 am
I dunno how the whole shebang works, but I did it anyway :lol:
Google has my sitemap now! oh noes heheh
May 10th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
@Joni – I see..I didn’t know that. Thanks for telling me about that. I wish I knew about that earlier so I wouldn’t have made a fool of myself. LOL :D
It’s all good, your pagerank will increase in due time. “Patience is a virtue” ;)
May 10th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Google performs PageRank updates every 3 months (more or less). Its recent update was last April. So the next would probably be in July.
Unfortunately, my PR is still the same as before. huhu. hehe. congrats gali, Jaypee! :)
May 10th, 2007 at 5:39 am
@jhay – so Google made a update for all sites and blogs huh? Geeh, I’m so outdated and I thought my pagerank increased because of the tweaks I did. LOL thanks for the info, I need to edit this post. :D
May 10th, 2007 at 4:01 am
God bless Google for giving us PR rating upgrades! :D My site is now rated at PR 5. :D
May 9th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
@Joni – That was fast! Yeah, that’s what I thought so too before I read those articles. Anyways, I sure hope someone who’s knowledgeable in this area would provide us with the information. :)
May 9th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Hi Jaypee! :) I’m no expert myself, but I think sitemaps help the pages of a website rank better in search engines (since it lets spiders know the list of pages they should crawl). But when it comes to Google PageRank, I think that’s only influenced by backlinks.
But I could be wrong! hehehe. Maybe your other site visitors can share their ideas. :)
May 9th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
@Joni – Is that so? See, that’s why I said I’m no expert at this. Hehe..the thing is I’ve read about sitemaps helping in increasing pagerank in several blog articles. I guess it doesn’t really increase the pagerank but helps it in a way. Hope someone can clarify this. Thanks for bringing this up.:)
May 9th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Actually, I think PageRank is *only* influenced by the quality and quantity of backlinks (or “votes” from other websites). It doesn’t have anything to do with web usability or the easy-crawling of spiders (which is a whole other story). There’s been a debate about this before so I’m not really sure if I got it right. :)