The success of any website depends on the rank that is assigned to it by popular search engines--the greater the rank the higher is the possibility of getting noticed on the Internet. Websurfers are usually attracted to the web pages according to their ranking in the search engine listings. The ones in the top ten positions are visited the most. For improving the PageRank of a website it is important to understand the process in which the ranking is done.

The PageRank (PR) given to a webpage indicates its importance. The webpage that ranks first is, obviously, a lot more important than the webpage that ranks eighth or ninth in the search engine listings. Google is considered to be the most important search engine by the web browsers. For assigning PRs Google first looks for pages that are linked up with other sites the most. When one webpage links up with another webpage, Google interprets that the first webpage is casting a vote for the second webpage. The importance of a webpage is determined by the number of votes it gets--the greater the number of votes, the more important it is perceived to be. Another factor that determines the importance that a webpage gains depends on the significance of the voter itself. If a webpage gets its votes from web pages that are very important, it is considered to have a greater importance than the ones that are voted by a large number of web pages that are not all that important.

The PR feature is one of the vital factors that determines the rank that Google assigns to the webpages in its search engine results, though it is not the only criterion for deciding its search engine rankings. The search engine rankings are influenced by factors other than the PR feature too.

While calculating the PR Google does not take all the linkings into account. If a webpage is getting links from known link farms, the link is not considered for deciding upon the PR. Link farm can be defined as a group of websites that hyperlink to every other site existing in the group. In fact, a webpage can get into trouble with Google for linking up with certain links. Google does not penalize webpages for the links that automatically link up with them, but they definitely penalize a webpage for forming some unfavorable links, because forming links is in the hands of the webmasters, though getting automatically linked up is not controlled by them. Hence a webpage needs to be very careful about the association that it makes. Usually sites that have a PR zero are the ones that are under a penalty and they should not be linked to.

For calculating the PR, the number of its inbound links is first considered. Google has a generalized formula which it uses to calculate the PR. Whenever a webpage links to another webpage, it gives it a certain PR value by voting for it. This PR value should be slightly lesser than its own PR value. This value is equally distributed among all the web pages that it links to. For example, it is always better to get a link from a page that has a PR value of 5 and has six other links than from one which has a PR value of 12 and links up with 20 other web pages. This signifies that getting links from web pages that have numerous other links is not really helpful. It is better to link with web pages that have a high PR and link up with a lesser number of other websites.

It is also seen that the difference between the PR values of web pages is not equal, i.e., the difference between PR1 and PR2 and the difference between PR2 and PR3 is not same. It is believed that the difference is set on a logarithmic scale and it takes a greater amount of PR value to move from the one rank to the next higher ranks. In such a case it is seen that linking with a webpage that has more PR value is more profitable than linking with a webpage with lesser PR value, which is a contrary result to what has been deduced from the previous conclusion. However, in any case, it is seen that linking with other web pages increases the PR value and it is always better to avoid linking with link farms.

It should also be borne in mind that by voting for another webpage, the PR of a webpage does not decrease. But it is seen that the PR is lost in an indirect way by linking to other sites. The quality of linking done enhances the PR value of a page. Good linking gives a high rank, whereas a poor ranking gives a low rank. PRs are equally distributed between the different pages that a particular webpage links to. But, nowadays, certain techniques are used for increasing the PR values on some sites by using channeling methodologies.