Does Google PageRank Affect Search Position?

Mobile browsing with geolocation have dramatically transformed relevant search results. Add to this searches via the Internet of Things.

On a scale of 1 to 10, what do you want your Google PageRank to be? An 8 is fantastic. The top 500 most popular websites are enormous corporations like Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Google. Not all of them rank 10. For example TED.com ranks about 8.

Would you be satisfied with 6? Say it. Done! How could it be so easy? Because it is becoming virtually impossible for people outside of Google to reliably measure search engine ranking. What you can measure is website traffic.

Named after Google co-founder Larry Page, PageRank is inversely beneficial. This means that a site that ranks 10 is more likely to organically appear in the number 1 spot. You cannot scroll enough through search results to find a site that ranks 0.

Tips for improving PageRank began drying up around 2014. Today, the websites that supposedly report your ranking may display a conservative 0–3 based on something called site authority. Your score is not likely enough to get you excited, but just enough incentive to purchase advertised tools (inbound links) on such sites to improve ranking.

Is PageRank gone? No, it still exists, however it is obfuscated by many other factors. With about 2 billion websites in 2020, and thousands of new ones every few minutes, how can anyone organically remain among the top positions? Something has to change.

Google PageRank Algorithm: Mathematical PageRanks for a simple network are expressed as percentages. (Google uses a logarithmic scale.) Page C has a higher PageRank than Page E, even though there are fewer links to C; the one link to C comes from an important page and hence is of high value. If web surfers who start on a random page have an 85% likelihood of choosing a random link from the page they are currently visiting, and a 15% likelihood of jumping to a page chosen at random from the entire web, they will reach Page E 8.1% of the time. (The 15% likelihood of jumping to an arbitrary page corresponds to a damping factor of 85%.) Without damping, all web surfers would eventually end up on Pages A, B, or C, and all other pages would have PageRank zero. In the presence of damping, Page A effectively links to all pages in the web, even though it has no outgoing links of its own.

Billions of Number-1 Positions

Mobile browsing with geolocation has dramatically transformed relevant search results. Add to this the searches via the Internet of Things (IoT) with high-speed G5 cellular deployment, digital assistants like Alexa, and similar appliances from social media giants.

The top ranking position is not just dependent on keywords. Web browser history and where users are physically located affect results. The language of verbal searches can transcend keywords. “What’s a good Chinese restaurant nearby?” is becoming a common query format.

With a variable like “nearby, there are potentially billions of contextual number-one positions. Even with a low PageRank you can sometimes appear in the top position, depending upon the person submitting the query. Your personal marketing and site engine optimization (SEO) testing can generate false positives since you are obviously “nearby” yourself.

Keywords may consistently place you in the top position on Google on your devices. However, search results by other people can land your pages much further down, based on different location and browser history.

Does Google PageRank Affect Search Position?

Content is King

Voluminous great content that relates to what people are searching for is important. Include logical search phrases and repeat long-tail keywords into clusters of pages. Readers who love your website are likely to tell friends and return. Hence, organic traffic progressively increases.

With millions more web pages coming online every year, how can you retain optimum position within search results? Keep churning out quality content arranged in clusters of articles. Like nearly everyone else, embed Google Analytics within your site.

Learn how to format pages to return best search results. At minimum, this involves a succinct summary description, alternate title, and photos.

Going a step further than SEO, Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) optimization improves visibility. Common SERP features are: Rich Text, AdWords, Site Links, and Image Pack. Optimization is increasingly dependent upon machine learning and AI. Paid advertising is increasing dominance.

If you want to tell others your Google PageRank is 6, who can dispute it with any qualitative reference? The only one who knows for sure is Google. But ranking is not the only criteria for delivering search results. Optimize your web pages for natural language queries with topic clusters and investigate SERP options.