PageRank, InLink Rank, and Search Engine Optimization
https://www.link-assistant.com/news/google-page-rank-2019.html
In 2000 Google introduced PageRank, a simple algorithm to determine the “importance” of a website. We discussed a simplified version of Google’s PageRank algorithm in class. Although the algorithm was never disclosed, people figured out an approximation of the algorithm: each site casts many “votes” to the other sites it links to, the summation of these votes make up 85% of the original site’s PageRank, and votes like these make up a site’s PageRank.
In 2000, however, a site’s PageRank value was public, and people were obsessed with achieving the highest PageRank. There were markets to buy and sell highly-ranked domains, many of which were shut down by Google. Over time, the PageRank became less and less public–today, the number is not displayed anywhere. This did not stop people from obsessing over these rankings.
We know that Google still uses a PageRank-like algorithm as a part of how they calculate a site’s importance, and thus how they order the websites resulting from a Google search.
And so the obsession with these values has not stopped.
Many companies focus on search engine optimization, or SEO, and make certain changes to a website to boost its rank on Google, or any other search engine, really. SEO PowerSuite is one such company.
Given that Google’s algorithm for ranking sites has become a secret, SEO PowerSuite boasts an algorithm of their own called InLink Rank. They claim a high-correlation between InLink Rank and Google’s current ranking system, based on their examination of 1,000,000 URL’s search positions. They do not disclose their algorithm, but they claim that they continuously improve their model by removing “spammy link networks” and constantly expanding the network they analyze and updating the sites’ InLink Ranks.
By checking your InLink rank, SEO PowerSuite claims you can get a sense of your Google ranking and take actions accordingly, using their SEO suite… It does not look like this fixation on optimizing a page’s rank will stop any time soon.