Google Toolbar PageRank

One of the things that confuses people when they start SEO is the idea of Google PageRank and Toolbar PageRank. The term PageRank is used interchangeably with Toolbar PageRank but they are slightly different. This short post should clear up any ambiguity.

Google PageRank

PageRank is the system of determining the quality of individual pages based on the number and quality of pages that are pointing to it. The more incoming links which are of good quality, the higher will be your PageRank. PageRank is used as one of the many factors which determine the position of your site in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs). The result of the calculation is a number between 0-10. This number is logarithmic, like earthquake scales, so PR of 10 is ten-times more powerful than a PR 9 and a PR 9 page is ten-times more powerful than PR of 8 and so on.

The calculation of PageRank is a tremendous feat of computing and it used to take x[1] days with a much smaller number of web pages, however even with the increasing number of pages, the every evolving power of computers it probably takes a lot less time. For each page that is indexed by Google, the PageRank is deduced.

Toolbar PageRank

Toolbar PageRank is an approximation to the actual PageRank of a page and it can not be considered as a very accurate measure of the true PageRank. It is updated infrequently. What can be said is that if a page has a toolbar PR of 5, then the true PR will not be less than 3 or greater than 7. But the true PR could be 6 or 4 depending on how long it has been since the update. Basically, in most cases the real PR will be between ± 1 of the toolbar PR.

Relevance of Toolbar PR

There are many other factors which determine the position of the page in SERPs for a particular query so it is possible for a site with a PR of 3 to appear above a site with a toolbar PR of 5. It is not really an important measure of how your website is going to rank. It is more important for people selling links.  When a link is placed on a site with a high toolbar PR, the link can pass link benefit onto the linked site. So buying links is a quick way to increase one’s position in the SERPs. However, the practice of selling links is frowned upon by Google as it artificially manipulates the index. However, I might also add that the same applies to their paid service Adwords which will place your site alongside the top of the search engine results for a related keyword provided that you have enough money.