http://www.google.com/support/webmasters is a very important site to go and visit if you want to hear it all straight from the horses mouth.

A quote from a linked page within the site explains the PageRank a bit better…

“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”.
http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

So explore what Google has to say as you build your site.

Find out and predict future Google Page Rank

The above link might be an interesting tool. The page will check 10 website urls at once to determine the exisiting Page Ranks, along with a prediction for future rankings.

One of the best features is that it tells you how many ‘backlinks’ are pointing at your site.

Doing a search for my employers website: www.ultralab.net (don’t include the http://) shows 5815 links to that website from other sites. Ultralab has a Page Rank of 6.

A search for Ultralab’s parent Univiersity website: www.anglia.ac.uk shows 8850 links to that website from other sites. Anglia Ruskin University has a Page Rank of 7.

And a search for my work weblog: matt.ultralab.net returns 411 links from others and maintains a Page Rank status of 4.

Because matt.ultralab.net is a seperate website compared to www.ultralab.net sub domains of Ultralab.net (including matt.ultralab.net) do not retain the same Page Rank figure as the main www.ultralab.net site. So we learn here that subdomains have their own levels of Google Juice.
The above searches also show that the more links to a site, the higher the Page Rank status.

I think implementing the code for this tool will have done something very smart for this website, they have given websites another reason to link to mine, directing web users at the Page Rank tool which could be considered a useful resource. In providing a useful page with ‘link to me currency’ the generaged ‘backlinks’ to the main site have increased and the Page Rank for this site.

This experiment has raised yet another question:

Would it be a benefit to have something other webmasters will point their websites at in order to increase backlinks and improve Google Juice?

I think so.

Find out and predict future Google Page Rank

Google ranks pages. Each page is ranked out of 10.

I find the easiest way to find out the exact page rank for a website is with the Firefox web browser.

Click the following banner and start the download before reading on, don’t worry, its safe and free:

Once you’ve installed FireFox the next thing to do is head over to the following site and add an extension (again for free). Follow the sites instructions carefully, click the following:
Add Google Page Rank to your FireFox web browser.Once that is done you’ll probably be prompted to restart your browser, so restart FireFox.If you want to check that the new Google Page Rank extension is installed, in the top menu select ‘Tools’ followed by ‘Extensions’.

A popup will show you what extensions you have installed, you’ll be able to follow a link and install more useful extensions if you want to.



The actual Page Rank for a page is determined at the bottom right hand corner of FireFox, lets look at the BBC website to see an example:

So the BBC has a 9 out of 10.

What about the other main television stations around the UK?

ITV get a 7.

How about Channel 4 and Five?

Over the next few months I’ll be watching the page ranks for the following two sites, which were both launched in the last week. I’ll be observing their Page Ranks, using the FireFox tool and reporting how they progress over time. Currently they rank at n/a, or zero.

Google Juice

Flick Chick Film ReviewsI’m really interested to find out which of the two sites Google finds first. Yahoo! has already stored and linked to Google Juice.So, to recap, you’ll need FireFox as the easiest way to find out a Page Rank.
If you did not download FireFox yet, here is the link again:

On Monday 13th September 2004 I wrote on my professional blog (matt.ultralab.net) about winning on the ‘Premium Bonds’. Here is the entry.

On Tuesday 25 April 2006 the Premium Bond blog entry had been read 1373 times and commented on once by somebody called Bob Balser who suggests purchasing block numbers of bonds increase chances of winning.

Anyway, what I’m really interested in understanding is why my entry simply titled ‘Premium Bonds, I won’ has attracted so many readers.

I explored the site statistics for this past seven days (18 - 25 April 2006) and have extracted the following sample example, which I’ve numbered in red the entries I am researching further:

Each line above represents a hit on the ‘Premium Bonds, I won’ page, each hit has a date and time stamp. I’m interested in the hits that have come from search engine results.

The following explains what each of the above image links (referenced in red) represent:

Link 1: Google.co.uk Search: premium bond syndicate
My page returned as a search result: Google Page 1, 2nd Result

Link 2: Google.com Search: PREMIUM BONDS FORUM
My page returned as a search result: Google Page 4, 2nd Result

Link 3: Google.co.uk Search: looking for lists of premium bond winners
My page returned as a search result: Google Page 1, 6th Result

Link 4: Google.co.uk Search: premium bonds my i won
My page returned as a search result: Google Page 1, 2nd Result

Link 5: Google.co.uk Search: premium bonds
My page returned as a search result: Interesting, I’ll explain in a minute

Link 6: Spam bot (I think?)

Link 7: Google.co.uk Search: premium bonds worthwhile investment
My page returned as a search result: Google Page 1, 5th Result

Link 5 proved the most interesting, and works positive against a theory I think about Google.

I think the following:

A Google searcher will enter a search looking for specific information or answers on Google. Google will return in it search results what it considers are links which will provide the right information. It is up to the searcher to click the suggested links (the top link being the one Google considers most relevant) which they think will answer their question or provide the relevant information required, Google provides short summaries to help support this decision making process.

If a searcher types in keywords and then chooses a search result Google provided which was not a ‘top link’ Google understands that link to be more relevant to the requested search string.

So, this would help explain why when I clicked link 5….

Link 5: Google.co.uk Search: premium bonds

…and was taken to the following Google search result page, which happened to be a page 6 for the ‘premium bonds’ search:

Notice how there is no link listed there through to my blog entry on Premium Bonds.

How can this be?

On page 5, a link to the entry is listed, I’ve highlighted it in a yellow box:

So what has happened? Why was the search result not showing on Page 6 like the Drupal blog statistics showed it should?

I believe it once did.

Look at this later search result (in red) five days later:

The search was for exactly the same words ‘premium bonds’ and it links to the 5th search page results for Google.co.uk

So that solves the mystery, the Premium Bond blog entry improved in search power from Google.co.uk’s page six for ‘Premium Bonds’ to page five in a period of five days.

So here I conclude that by visitors digging deep into Google search results and clicking lowly listed links, they help pages improve in their search returns.

Every time I explore ideas, both mine and others on how Google works I’m left with more questions. Today I’m left with…

Why has my blog entry on Premium Bonds returned in searches for ’syndicate’ and ‘forum’ search strings? Surely Google is giving out the wrong results here?

What about searchers who change their mind while searching? For example, say you were searching for a ‘Premium Bond Syndicate’ and was faced with a Google search result for ‘Premium Bonds, I won’? Would you click the link out of curiosity, and at the same time confuse Google to think that ‘Premium Bonds, I won’ is a good search result for the ‘Premium Bond Syndicate’ search string?

Or has this investigation been a waste of time? Maybe my search improvement for ‘Premium Bonds’ results was simply due to falling search results for other pages? Why did those pages fall?

Lots of questions, no rock solid answer….

Ideas? Thoughts? Opinions?