Me and my other half was talking on the phone about blogs and bloggers when the issue of pagerank comes out. Me being techy and she being normal, of course the first question from her was: What is a pagerank?

Alamak.. *bertukar kepada tutor mode*

Definition and Explanation:

Pagerank is a ranking given by Google to all websites that is being indexed in Google. The more important a website is, then a higher ranking (out of 10)  will be given. E.g Facebook – the largest social networking websites that is being indexed in Google as #1 sites with the most users: have a pagerank (PR) of 10.

The exact way Google determined whether a page is important or not is unknown. It is believed that the algorithm calculated the pagerank based on 500 millions variable and 2 million terms and the algorithm changed over time – quote from Wikipedia.

So, since this is Google’s way of determining the importance of your page, usually PR is used to determine whether a site is a hoax, a scam, or not. That’s one of the use. Also, it gives an indication whether that sites (and it’s owner) is popular or not.

So, the simple way of understanding it is..

1. The higher the pagerank, the easier Google put the page in it’s search engine result.
2. The more search engine result given, the more users visiting the page.
3. The way to increase your pagerank is to publish something useful for your keyword that you wanted to target, so that many links will share your sites and make it popular plus useful — maybe this is the easiest concept in increasing your pageranks.

Having said that, usually it is hard for a niche blog / personal blog to achieve more than 5 or 6 pageranks nowadays. It is hard but it is not impossible. Seth Godin blog has a PR7. Mine? I got 2. Obefiend’s and Redmummy got 3.

How to check my pagerank?

Two ways:

1. Go to this web service that offers you to check the pagerank of any sites: http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php
2. Install Google Toolbar and enable the Pagerank features. See video below.

Google has already put a short video explaining how to enable the pagerank feature from the Google Toolbar. Personally, I use this since it is integrated into Firefox directly:

So, was that helpful? Does it give you an idea to get your web ranked better?

• Previous Entry: Goodbye IBM, Oh y halo thar HP!
• Next Entry: Malaysia, Selamat Ulang Tahun Kemerdekaan Ke-53