Although I promptly alerted Google when we launched this blog about three months ago, our Google PageRank has always been 0 out of 10. Not anymore. We have suddenly emerged with a PageRank of 7 out of 10. PageRank is Google’s “measure of importance� of a page, and is determined as follows:
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.”
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.
For comparison purposes, here’s the current PageRanks of some other blawgs:
Bainbridge 7
Business Law Prof 6
Conglomerate 7
Co-Op 5
Ideoblog 6
Prawfs 6
VC 7
I’m surprised we stack up so well considering we don’t get anywhere near the number of hits that many of the above blawgs get. I assumed there would be a strong correlation. Anyway, thanks to those who link to us!
RSS - Posts
You can add a PageRank indicator to a toolbar on Internet Explorer by installing Google Toolbar. I think the indicator is standard on Mozilla Firefox.
How do you find out what a page’s “Page Rank” is?
More on the mystery. In response to your theory, Geoff, many of our links have come from fairly big websites — we’ve had dozens of links from the Volokh Conspiracy, Instapundit, SCOTUSBlog, BoingBoing, as well as links from Michelle Malkin, Washington Monthly, Daily Kos, and more. So I’m still quite perplexed. Maybe Google just isn’t infallible after all . . . or maybe Google just hates us.
Anyway, congrats on being on Google’s good side.
Wow. Good for us. Geoff, have you not learned that it is best not to ask questions about the mysterious process by which prices (and page ranks) are formed? The market has spoken … 😉
Unless I misunderstand Google’s methodology (sparse though the description is), it’s not only number but also importance that determines pagerank. Is it so unlikely that in TOTM’s first 3 months we have managed only a relatively small number of links, but that those are from, generally, “important” sites?
This is very strange. We at Conglomerate have always lagged behind Volokh, Althouse, and Bainbridge … as we should based on any objective measure of popularity (traffic or links). I am thrilled that we are equal to them now, but it doesn’t make sense. And it makes even less sense for TOTM to have that same Page Rank and for Co-op to be at 5. I agree with Dan. That is just screwy.
P.S. And congats on your great pagerank!
I’m utterly perplexed with our pagerank at Concurring Opinions. We are rank 1,335 on Technorati, which tracks total links to over 30 million websites. We have 2,128 links from 685 sites. This is more than some of the blogs on the above list, yet our pagerank is still on the low side. So we stack up well on links and on daily visits, yet our pagerank doesn’t correspond. Maybe it’s Google’s way of punishing us for all my posts about Google.