Google PageRank or PR for short is numeric value assigned by Google to pages that represents how important a page is. The more important and known your pages are, the better PR they will get. PR is a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 is an unknown page for Google and 10 is the highest PR that can be assigned.

PageRank provides the basis for all of web search tools. It is always updated by Google in order to improve it and optimize it.

How is PageRank Calculated?

No one knows for sure how PageRank is currently calculated by Google (except Google itself ). Some speculations about the algorithm are made by webmasters all of them are based on the original PageRank published by Google.

In essence, Google interprets a link for page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. This means that page A is considered important (at least by page B).

The more votes (more links) page A gets the higher its PR will be.

Going into more details

As stated above, the main factor in PR is links (or backlinks as they are called). But no all links weight the same when it comes to PR. So an 'important' page linking to you gives you more PR than a 'less important' one.

There for you should always try to get backlinks from pages that have a high PR. These will benefit your page the most.

Another factor in PR propagation is the number of out-links the 'voting' page have. So a PR4 page with only one out-link on it might give you more weight than a PR5 page with 100 out-links on it.

An typical example here would be the famous milliondollarhomepage. This page is PR7 page with hunderds of out-links therefore its weight is would contribute very little to your page PR.

How to increase my PageRank?

Well as you would have probably guessed, PR can be increased by getting more backlinks for your page. The more backlinks and the higher quality they are the more your PR will be.

Here are some tips:

- Submit your site to directories.

- Write important content to your site that would make people link to you.

- Write articles and distribute them.

- Although I don't recommend it but some people recommend it: Do link exchanges.

- Participate in forums (while adding your signature which includes a link to your site).

- Buy some links on high PR pages.

When does Google calculate PRs?

Google calculates pages PRs once every few months, this is called PR update. After a PR update is done, all pages are assigned a new PR by Google and you will have this PR until a new PR update is done.

New sites that were just launched will have a PR of 0 until an update is done by Google so that they are assigned an appropriate PR.

Other 'possible' factors considered

The following are some other factors might be considered by Google for calculating the PR lately:

- Site age: The older the better, Google seems to like old sites.

- Backlink relevancy: Googles seems to be taking into account how relevant is the page linking to you, if it is not that relevant, the link won't weight much.

- Backlink duration: How long was the backlink up? The more the better.