Google launches new algorithm

Google will begin showing multiple results from the same domain in search engine listings, it has been announced. The news, which was revealed in an official Google blog, is said to have been introduced in order to help users find more relevant information through searches.

Writing on the official Google site, software engineer Samarth Keshava wrote:

Google Launches New Algorithm

"Today we’ve launched a change to our ranking algorithm that will make it much easier for users to find a large number of results from a single site. For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, we’ll now show more results from the relevant site.

"We’re always reassessing our ranking and user interface, making hundreds of changes each year. We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page."

The news of the algorithm change comes as Rob Ousbey, a search engine optimisation expert, discovered the search engine was also testing live updating search results. Writing on his own personal SEO blog, Rob commented:

"Earlier today, I noticed that my Google results were centered in the middle of the page. This evening, I spotted that you don't even need to hit the 'Search' button anymore - Google updates the results for you while you're typing."

At present, the feature is still in a testing page, so it is unknown if the search engine is set to introduce the new format to all users.

7 Deadly Business Blogging Mistakes

Below are the top 7 mistakes we see companies make with their business blog:

Business Blogging

1. Brand Inconsistency: 

From the design and layout of a blog to the content, from the images you post to blog loading time, your brand is directly expressed in every element of your blog. If even one of these features is misaligned with your brand, you'll run the risk of creating an inaccurate image of your brand. And remember, your blog readers are not only members of your target audience, but they are also your peers and key influencers. Providing them with an imprecise perception of your brand could be detrimental to your business.

2. Business-Centric Web Copy: 

Using your blog solely as a sales tool is unacceptable in the blogosphere. The blogging community is built on valuable information and relationships that could lead to business partnerships, new clients, and an increase in your key influencers. Therefore, blog content should never try to make a sale; rather, it should provide your readers with valuable information that is fresh, current, and informative. Focus on writing content that gives something of worth to the reader.

3. Lack of Clear Contact Information: 

One of the most frustrating things as an individual who is trying to contact a blogger is a lack of contact information. Don't be one of those blogs that has no contact information.


Adding contact information is easy and painless-I promise. There are three steps involved:


Create a page on your blog titled "Contact."
Drop your contact information onto this page.
Click publish.
And voila! You have a contact page that makes it easy for peers, key influencers, and your target audience to contact you.

4. Zero Marketing Efforts: 

Blogging for business requires much more than posting two to three times a week on important industry information. Blog promotion on social media platforms and ensuring all posts offer valuable information and are properly optimized are merely a small portion of gaining exposure for your blog and your business.


In order to use your blog to its fullest potential, you must build blogger relations. To increase blog readership, consider commenting on influential blogs, mentioning other bloggers on your blog, posting articles from influential blogs on your social media profiles, asking bloggers to guest blog, and becoming friends with your favorite bloggers on social media.

5. Improper Use of Tags: 

In a nutshell, tags are what help the search engines and tag directories catalogue your website. Tags help you get found online. Tags should reflect what your readers would be typing into search engines. Keywords you use throughout your post should simultaneously be used as tags.


Categories, on the other hand, are meant for readers to easily find the information they're looking for. For example, if you wrote a travel blog that focused on countries in Europe, you might have a category for each country you focus on. And let's say you wrote a post on the variety of French baguettes. You would categorize this post under France but tag it as French food, travel France, etc. These tags describe the specific content of the post and help readers to find your posts based on specific keywords and terms.

6. Bad Headlines: 

Blog headlines need to grab the readerand compel him or her to take action by reading your blog. It's your first hurdle, and it's a big one.


The headline needs to speak to a pain the reader has or something the reader wants-now. Arousing curiosity is a good tactic. Appealing to strong emotions grabs the attention of the reader and hits him or her on a basic gut level.


When you're writing headlines, focus on the benefits, don't try to be too clever, don't give false promises, and keep it short and sweet. And, keep an eye on which headlines attract the most readers, and try writing future headlines in the same manner.

7. Thick Copy: 

Forcing your readers to sift through loads of dense copy is not a great way to win them over. In fact, it's one of the most agonizing things you can do to them. Give your readers what they want-good information-quickly.


Your blog post needs to be as easy to read as possible. Many people will scan your copy rather than taking the time to read every word. If they can't scan it quickly and get to the meat, they'll leave-and probably won't return.


Therefore, if you want to create a loyal readership, make sure you write in short paragraphs, keep sentences short, use bulleted lists, eliminate extra words, and help readers to get to the point with effective headings.

Differences Between the Google and Yahoo Search Engines

When trying to figure out the key differences between Google and Yahoo search engines, the most simple way to put it is that Yahoo's biggest contributor is the advertiser, Google's biggest customer is the average web surfer. This might be the reason why Google has fared a little better than Yahoo when it comes to searching for things online. Yahoo tends to cater to the advertiser integrating as many advertisements as possible extending page lengths to do so. This is their money maker so it is the area that they focus the most on. Google does advertise plenty, but their main concern is the average web traveler. They have worked on making the most relevant key words searched the sites that appear at the top of the search.

Google and Yahoo Search Engines

For example, in the year 2004 Yahoo had an astounding two hundred fifty links on its home page linking to advertisers. People see enough advertisements on websites and in every day life. The last thing they want is to be bombarded by ads when trying to search for a specific thing. In all fairness, as the years have passed Yahoo has begun to refine this and take down some of the links decreasing it to about a hundred or so.


The internet is a huge and overwhelming place to look for things. Without search engines such as Yahoo and Google, it would be nearly impossible to find exactly what you are looking for. This is the precise reason that Google has continued to be a household name, they focus on saving your time and helping you find exactly what it is you are looking for on the web with their advertisements being relevant to the search topic. Yahoo more focuses on ad revenues and increasing page views.

Article Marketing - The Secret to Massive Traffic

Article marketing is my pet topic. I work on article marketing quite a bit to drive free targeted traffic to my websites. It gives you the privilege to get a published article links on the search engines. The quality of traffic from article marketing is one of the best you can ever get other than PPC and conversion rates from the articles I have written are excellent. Sometimes, it can be as close as 5%. Getting a published article links all over the search engine is a major plus for your business.

With confirmed article links, your site will be soon create a buzz all over the major search engines. Article marketing also give your site a guaranteed article links as potential customers look out for this before buying from any site.

I highly recommend article marketing if you really want to make a lot of sales online. This is the secret to big sales that internet marketers employ to rake in millions of dollars.

There are several reasons why article marketing is so popular:

Article Marketing

1. It is absolutely free. You do not need to pay a single cent. Article directories accept and publish your articles for free. All you need is to write the articles.

2. It drives FREE instant and targeted traffic to your websites. Within a short time, your article gets indexed in the search engines and rank well in Page 1 or 2 if it is optimized. Such traffic is your warm market.

3. Articles are great sales pages! If you write well enough to presell your customers, they would be ready to buy your products once they hit the sales page.

4. Articles get you high Page Rank one-way links. Imagine your article on a PR7 website with a link to your website? These boost your website ranking.

How To Write To Create An Avalanche Of Traffic To Your Websites?

1. Do your research at the forums. Hear the voice of your prospects and know what they want. Find out the main theme, the underlying message of their topics. Perhaps they want to know how to write an article in the fastest way possible?

2. Target the right keywords.Targeting Long Tail Keywords. This is the KEY! Most article marketers get it wrong!!

3. Include the keywords in your article title. Start with the keyword, avoid placing it towards the end and avoid unnecessary words. Search engine spiders read content from left to right. Too many irrelevant words can confuse them.

4. Include the targeted keywords in your article introduction, body content and conclusion. Go for 1 to 1.5 % keyword density.

5. Write Regularly. Try to write at least 1 or 2 articles a week on different keywords. You would realize that the traffic soon becomes consistent.

6. Submit different versions of the same article to various article directories like EzineArticles, GoArticles, SearchWarp, IdeaMarketers and ArticlesBase

More so, make sure you have confirmed article links so that your potential customers do not see you as a scammer. With your guaranteed article links which makes your site an authority site, all over the search engine and major site; you will definitely have a lot of sales which means a lot of profit for you.

The Search Engine Optimization Method

The number one method to dominate the first page of Search engine results is to do more than your competitors is doing. You need a long term plan to dominate search engines result pages. It's difficult to give a definite method that search engines will use to determine who will be number one and who will not. The reason being Search engines Companies change upgrade their systems regularly and their algorithms are changed from time to time.


However, how high you rank depends on two major factors:


   1. On Page - What is found on your website and
   2. Off page - What other sites say about you by linking to your site.


Most search engines use "on page" factors to play 30% of ranking and "off page" factors takes the remaining 70%. The percents vary depending on how competitive a niche is. Sites with lots of direct affiliate links get a slap and do not rank as high as sites without direct affiliate links.


Nevertheless, for you to keep you search engine rankings high you have to make search engine optimization method an ongoing task as opposed to an event you outsource one and forget. The following steps are recommended from the beginning and on an ongoing basis:

Search Engine Optimization Method

* Web design - Do your site on a content management system, which will allow you to add more fresh content in future and an ongoing basis the easy way as opposed to a Static Site that will make you rely on a developer each time you want to add content.


* Link Building - make sure you get a standard Link Text with your primary keyword to link to the home page, and your Secondary keywords to link to other pages on your site.


* Article marketing - Write irresistible articles that will make other web masters want to link to you. One way links gets you more value than link exchanges.


* Comment on blogs - using you link to comment on blogs gives you a score on your search engine score rating.


* Social Bookmarking - share articles from your site on social Bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. This way you site will be discovered by more people and even make them want to link to back to you from their site.


* Social Network Sites - Share contents on your site on social networks like Facebook and MySpace. This increases the number of links to your site.


In conclusion, keep on doing something that will affect positively your on page and off page factors as shown above.

Find 15 Off-Site SEO Tips

15 Off Site SEO Tips

1. Deep Link Building


Deep links are your site's backlinks or (inbound links) which point to a page other than your home page. Too many sites focus entirely on inbound links to their home page for the most competitive keywords. A better SEO strategy is to create categories and topics on your site and build relevant backlinks from high authority sites which target more specific keywords for each category page. Remember it is not the overall number of links which is most important, but the number of inbound links from high authority sites pointing to your site as a reference for a particular keyword.


2. In-Bound and External Links


Receiving links from sites with high authority on your keyword topic is absolute gold, especially if the anchor text includes the keywords most important to your site. Promoting your site is part of any SEO plan, but fresh quality content is still the best way to achieve quality in-bound links. Many SEO experts will try black-hat SEO tactics such as comment stuffing or using link farms to generate a large quantity of in-bound links, but the search engines are sophisticated enough not to fall for this deception any more and may penalize sites that use these tactics. Your SEO expert can help you establish a content management system that integrates press releases and industry promotion as part of your plan to increase authoritative in-bound links. In addition, linking to well-respected established sites from your own site is advisable.


3. Social Networking Tools: Facebook


Promoting your site on Facebook with a company page, groups, and advertising can help you connect with your visitors in a more personal manner, increase traffic to your site, and create brand loyalty. Your SEO plan should incorporate maximizing the potential of Facebook's social network.


4. Social Networking Tools: Twitter


Google and Bing are both offering real time search results as on their search results pages, which include up-to-the-minute tweets from Twitter users. Optimizing your site for Twitter search should be a key part of your social media and SEO plan. Promoting your site and your products via Twitter increase the likelihood of building site recognition and improving real time organic search results. Consult with a SEO professional regarding integrating and optimizing your Twitter account.


5. Keyword Analysis


Understanding what keywords your site should emphasize and how to use them in your off-site promotion is essential. Every link to your site offers what is called "link juice," which is an added SEO benefit derived from in-bound links. It is preferable to have sites use keywords as text anchors when linking to your site instead of your company name, your URL, or images. Remember it is extremely likely that there are more searches using the type of product or service which you provide than search queries with your company name. The more in-bound links your site has from sites with authority using keyword anchor text, the better your site will rank on the search engines. Sites also need to determine if it is strategic to target narrow long tail keywords or more broad short term keywords. Keyword analysis is a moving target as traffic, social trends, and return on investments (ROI) change and adapt. Sites should perform keyword analysis weekly or hire a SEO consultant to advise them on keyword strategy.


6. Competitor Analysis


Sites like Compete.com and Alexa.com provide excellent free analytical tools to check on how your competitors are faring. These sites also offer paid subscriptions to offer advanced analysis to keep track of traffic and keyword trends in your industry. Yahoo Site Explorer is an excellent resource for tracking of your competitor's backlinks and determining what directories or paid listings may be beneficial to join. Investigating your competitors and their sites thoroughly is an important part of your site's SEO plan.


7. Avoiding Duplicate Content


Syndicating your content in other sites is an excellent way to promote your site and the relevant content you produce, but you have to be very careful to avoid any search engine penalties for duplicate content either on-site or off-site. A SEO professional can help your site manage and organize content so that it is search engine friendly as well as available to be syndicated on other sites or blogs.


8. Blogs and RSS Feeds


Optimizing a site for search engines includes optimizing your blog and RSS feed. Each site is different, but typically blogs which are produced via WordPress, Typepad, Joomla, Drupal, and Google Blogger can be incorporated into your content management system to maximize your blog posts for inclusion in search enginess and help increase the organic search relevancy of your site for keywords. A SEO adviser can also help you syndicate your RSS feeds (including potential revenue from Google Adsense for Feeds), so that your blog becomes part of your company's viral marketing plan.




9. Paid Search Engine Inclusion


Paying for search engine inclusion is very strategic. Depending upon your industry, products, and organic search results, your company could either be wasting money with paid inclusion or missing out on a great opportunity. Before signing up for or renewing any paid incusion, have a SEO expert run a cost-benefit analysis and advise you othe which paid inclusion option will work for your site.


10. Local Search


Optimizing your site for local search involves including your site in the correct directories and internet yellow pages. Google, Bing, and Yahoo will all allow companies to promote their site through local listings including the company address, company info, and hours of operation. A SEO plan should ensure that these listings are optimized correctly with the correct keywords. In addition, there exist literally hundreds of other avenues of local search that your SEO professional can advise you to get an optimized listing to increase local traffic to your site.


11. Web Directories


A web directory is just a collection of related links. Typically the incoming traffic from web directories is very small, but there are SEO benefits to strategically placing your site on the key business directories for your site. Again, the proper descriptions, URLs, and keyword should all analyzed before making a web directory placement.


12. Vertical Search Engines


A vertical search engine is search engine devoted to a certain industry or topic of online content. If your site is not listed in a verticial search engine that covers any of your keyword topics, then your site may be missing out on an excellent opportunity. Vertical search engines can come-and-go quickly so consult with a SEO expert oftern to determine which vertical search engines are most appropriate for your site.


13. SEO and Traditional Marketing


While a marketers frequently miss out on optimizing sites for search engines with their design, copy, content, and campaigns, it is important that a SEO plan and a markting plan be fully compatible and working together. Frequently, SEO advice on traditional marketing involves minor tweeks based on keyword research and site traffic analysis. Make sure your SEO camp and marketing people are working together productively.


14. Viral Marketing


The term viral marketing typically refers to the use of social networking to produce self-replicating "viral" effects in the online promotion of a business or an idea. The goal of viral marketing is to use existing social networks and with little effort or cost transport a message from a small-scale to a large-scale. Whether this is accomplished via free content or services, games, contests, or general online buzz is secondary to the intended result which is relaying a marketing message to a large number of people. A SEO consultant can analyze the potential ways viral marketing can be incorporated into your search marketing strategy and explain any pitfalls of your current marketing program in regard to SEO.


15. Off-site Search Engine Traps


If your site has consistently underperformed on the search engines despite your site being professionally designed and filled with relevant content, there may be an underlying problem which is often identified as a "search engine trap". In many case the solution is innocous and can be easily fixed. Have a SEO expert analyze your site from top-to-bottom if you suspect your site may have fallen into a search engine trap.

The Perfect SEO Services - SEO Services India

Are you looking for SEO specialist and optimizer? Well, finding a suitable SEO specialist is not an easy job, in fact little bit knowledge about the SEO professionals and services can help you in finding the appropriate one.

The Perfect SEO Services

At the time of economy slowdown, web based transactions have not much been affected and SEO specialist helped in rendering good SEO marketing services that ensures growth and success. Most of the people in Ahmedabad contributed in the performance of electronic commerce and have consented e-transactions. With each day, numerous numbers of websites have been raised and as an outcome, the existence of products and services also increases. In these conditions, a more strategic way of reaching the targeted and potential customers is essential as without it, no business can lasts longer. There are multiple web companies in Ahmedabad that proffer modern techniques and strategies of SEO, and with the help of these techniques myriad of businesses located across Asia and Asia pacific areas can gain profits.


Nowadays, considered as a mandatory tool for business maximization as well as growth, SEO services Ahmedabad are widely acknowledged and preferred. SEO helps in attaining the higher ranks in the search engines, along with fetching gains and profits. SEO services Ahmedabad helps in identifying the efficiency and effectiveness, of search engine marketing techniques. Raising the number of visitors and traffic, visiting particular website indeed can make a vast difference in ROI's and business returns.


For this, SEO services Ahmedabad uses best link building company and executives, which can easily target specific websites from which web traffic can rise as well as visitors can attract. You can easily figure out the rates and quotations for SEO services Ahmedabad online by just doing a little research and few clicks of mouse.


Going for a link building company, could deliver you certain benefits. One of the most important benefits of link building is getting good quality traffic from varied websites, leading in increased sales and profits. Link building company provides assurance of prime quality incoming links that could be a valuable source for your own website. Delivering your company greater exposure to the search engines, basically link building services helps your website to get indexed for search engine optimization.

Social Bookmarking and SEO

Social bookmarking is defined as the process of tagging a website and saving it for later. Instead of saving them to your web browser, you are saving them to the web.

Social Bookmarking SEO - TOP SEM SEO

Since your bookmarks are in online, you can easily share them with your friends and it is a great way to promote your business. It is a much cheaper alternative for traditional media advertising. Traditional media advertising can costs thousands of dollars. In this process you can not only save your favorite websites and send them to your friends, but you can also look at what other people have found interesting enough to tag. Most of the social bookmarking sites may let you to browse through the items based on most popular, recently added, or belonging to a certain category like shopping, technology, politics, blogging, news, sports, etc. You can easily find, what people have bookmarked by typing in what you are looking for in the search tool. At times, the social bookmarking sites are being used as intelligent search engines.


Many good articles did not receive the attention it deserves because of the lousy headlines. The headlines are not interesting so people are not motivated to click the link. The headline is the first thing that the user sees while browsing for information on the site. If you don’t write a good headline, it is very difficult for your posts to reach the first page of the social bookmarking site. You should not use the original headline for the headline that is used in the social bookmarking submission. You can use humorous news to attract attention. Off beat news can also generate a lot of traffic. You can also create tutorials to attract the attention of the visitors. There are many types of tutorials that you can create. You should create tutorials based in your own niche. For example, if you are promoting a web design blog, you can create a unique design by using Photoshop and share it with other people on the social bookmarking site.


The headline plays an important role in attracting the attention of the visitors. However, a meaningful description is also very important. The description must provoke the visitors to visit the links. You are never to use lies to deceive the visitor into visiting your site. For example, if you are selling acai berry, you may write “Eating acai berry will help you to lose hundreds of pounds in one week”. Visitors know how to differentiate between a myth and fact so using lie. Instead, you must be honest to the visitors so that they will put their trust in you.


If you own a lot of websites, it will take a long time to submit to all the social bookmarking sites. If you want to save time, you can outsource the social bookmarking submission to a SEO company. The SEO company will social bookmark your site to the most popular social media sites. If you hire a social bookmarking service, you will be required to provide a few information including title, description, keywords and URL. 


If you don’t want to write the title and description, you can hire the SEO company to help you write them. The SEO company should provide a detailed report. If you are ordering a monthly subscription, the SEO company must provide a monthly progress report. The monthly progress report will show improvement of your site’s ranking in the search engine before and after the social bookmarking submission. You should hire SEO company that can complete the social bookmarking submission within the allotted time. The final social bookmarking report should be sent to you within the turnaround time.

How to make a profit by running a website ?

There are many different reasons why websites are created. They can be created as a means of promoting a business or other organisation, they can be created by a government body or tourist agency as a means of providing public service information, or they can even be created by individualsa who are seeking to develop a niche for themselves in the world of Internet marketing. Whatever the reason for creating a website, there are several ways from which it is possible to make money and show a significant profit from the process.


There are certain costs which are likely to be associated both with the creation and the hosting of a traditional website. The initial costs may very well be determined by the technical knowledge of the Webmaster and whether it is necessary to pay a third party to develop the website. Although this cost is likely to be a one off in terms of its initial scale, it is important to determine what charges will be levied for any future updates which are likely to be required, as every expense will require to be taken in to account when considering a likely profit margin. In a similar sense, what is likely to be a monthly charge for domain hosting on the Web should be factored in to this equation.


It is important to make full price and service comparisons when considering the costs of setting up and maintaining a website and thus very often well worth taking account of the services afforded by Web 2.0 hosting platforms, such as Squidoo and Hub Pages. While certain professional organisations may not wish to avail themselves of these wholly free services, individuals and small businesses could in theory eliminate all set up and servicing costs and very effectively maintain an exceptionally profitable website via this method.


When the costs of the website have been attended to, how the website is to generate revenue has to be considered. The first item to be looked at is Google Adsense, as it is virtually maintenance free when it has been set up and can begin generating revenue from the site within a matter of hours. An application should be made to Google via the Adsense website and Google’s instructions followed thereafter. It should be noted here that Web 2.0 service Squidoo operates a pooled Adsense revenue programme and this direct option will not be available.


Selling affiliate marketing products from a website can also generate high levels of revenue where the website is sufficiently focused in subject nature and the right products can be found. Success in this respect means choosing only a few very relevant products and pitching them to site visitors in such a fashion as to make their purchase seem extremely attractive and beneficial.


Making a profit by running a website is not only possible in a direct sense but also very much in an indirect fashion. This profitable feature is most likely to apply to businesses, where the popularity of the website is used to drive traffic to offline premises, or even other locations around the Web where products and services are available for purchase. This is where running a blog in conjunction with a website can prove highly beneficial.


In order to make a profit in any sense whatsoever, a website will require to receive sufficient levels of targeted Internet traffic. This means that considerable effort will have to be expended upon learning about the many aspects of SEO and putting each of them in to practice on an ongoing basis. This is also a service which can be provided by a third party but as costs are very often high, careful research and self-education could considerably increase the overall profitability of the website.

The Google PageRank Algorithm

What is PageRank?


PageRank is the algorithm used by the Google search engine, originally formulated by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in their paper The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.


It is based on the premise, prevalent in the world of academia, that the importance of a research paper can be judged by the number of citations the paper has from other research papers. Brin and Page have simply transferred this premise to its web equivalent: the importance of a web page can be judged by the number of hyperlinks pointing to it from other web pages


So what is the algorithm?


It may look daunting to non-mathematicians, but the PageRank algorithm is in fact elegantly simple and is calculated as follows:


PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))
where PR(A) is the PageRank of a page A 
PR(T1) is the PageRank of a page T1 
C(T1) is the number of outgoing links from the page T1 
d is a damping factor in the range 0 < d < 1, usually set to 0.85

Google's PageRank and Beyond: The Science of Search Engine Rankings

The PageRank of a web page is therefore calculated as a sum of the PageRanks of all pages linking to it (its incoming links), divided by the number of links on each of those pages (its outgoing links).


And what does this mean?


From a search engine marketer's point of view, this means there are two ways in which PageRank can affect the position of your page on Google:


The number of incoming links. Obviously the more of these the better. But there is another thing the algorithm tells us: no incoming link can have a negative effect on the PageRank of the page it points at. At worst it can simply have no effect at all.




The number of outgoing links on the page which points at your page. The fewer of these the better. This is interesting: it means given two pages of equal PageRank linking to you, one with 5 outgoing links and the other with 10, you will get twice the increase in PageRank from the page with only 5 outgoing links.
At this point we take a step back and ask ourselves just how important PageRank is to the position of your page in the Google search results.


The next thing we can observe about the PageRank algorithm is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with relevance to the search terms queried. It is simply one single (admittedly important) part of the entire Google relevance ranking algorithm.


Perhaps a good way to look at PageRank is as a multiplying factor, applied to the Google search results after all its other computations have been completed. The Google algorithm first calculates the relevance of pages in its index to the search terms, and then multiplies this relevance by the PageRank to produce a final list. The higher your PageRank therefore the higher up the results you will be, but there are still many other factors related to the positioning of words on the page which must be considered first


So what's the use of the PageRank Calculator - if no incoming link has a negative effect, surely I should just get as many as possible, regardless of the number of outgoing links on its page?


Well, not entirely. The PageRank algorithm is very cleverly balanced. Just like the conservation of energy in physics with every reaction, PageRank is also conserved with every calculation. For instance, if a page with a starting PageRank of 4 has two outgoing links on it, we know that the amount of PageRank it passes on is divided equally between all of its outgoing links. In this case 4 / 2 = 2 units of PageRank is passed on to each of 2 separate pages, and 2 + 2 = 4 - so the total PageRank is preserved!


Note: There are scenarios where you may find that total PageRank is not conserved after a calculation. PageRank itself is supposed to represent a probability distribution, with the individual PageRank of a page representing the likelihood of a 'random surfer' chancing upon it. I have discussed this concept in more detail here).


On a much larger scale, supposing Google's index contains a billion pages, each with a PageRank of 1, the total PageRank across all pages is equal to a billion. Moreover, each time we recalculate PageRank, no matter what changes in PageRank may occur between individual pages, the total PageRank across all one billion pages will still add up to a billion.


Firstly, this means that although we may not be able to change the total PageRank across all pages, by strategic linking of pages within our site, we can affect the distribution of PageRank between pages. For instance, we may want most of our visitors to come into the site through our home page. We would therefore want our home page to have a higher PageRank relative to other pages within the site. We should also recall that all of the PageRank of a page is passed on and divided equally between each of the outgoing links on a page. We would therefore want to keep as much combined PageRank as possible within our own site without passing it on to external sites and losing its benefit. This means we would want any page with lots of external links (ie. links to other people's web sites) to have a lower PageRank relative to other pages within the site to minimise the amount of PageRank which is 'leaked' to external sites. Bear in mind also our earlier statement, that PageRank is simply a multiplying factor applied once Google's other calculations regarding relevance have already been calculated. We would therefore want our more keyword-rich pages to also have a higher relative PageRank.


Secondly, if we assume that every new page in Google's index begins its life with a PageRank of 1, there is a way we can increase the combined PageRank of pages within our site - by increasing the number of pages! A site with 10 pages will start life with a combined PageRank of 10 which is then redistributed through its hyperlinks. A site with 12 pages will therefore start with a combined PageRank of 12. We can thus improve the PageRank of our site as a whole by creating new content (ie. more pages) and then control the distribution of that combined PageRank through strategic interlinking between the pages.


And this is the purpose of the PageRank Calculator - to create a model of the site on a small scale including the links between pages, and see what effect the model has on the distribution of PageRank.


How does the PageRank Calculator work?





It's very simple really. Start by typing in the number of interlinking pages you wish to analyse and hit 'Submit'. I have confined this number to just twenty pages to ease server resources. Even so, this should give a reasonable indication of how strategic linking can affect the PageRank distribution.


Next, for ease of reference once the calculation has been performed, provide a label for each page (eg. 'Home Page', 'Links Page', 'Contact Us Page', etc) and again hit 'Submit'.


Finally, use the list boxes to select which pages each page links to. You can use CTRL and SHIFT to highlight multiple selections.


You can also use this screen to change the initial PageRanks of each page. For instance, if one of your pages is supposed to represent Yahoo, you may wish to raise its initial PageRank to, say, 3. However, in actual fact, starting PageRank is irrelevant to its final computed value. In other words, even if one page were to start with a PageRank of 100, after many iterations of the equation (see below), the final computed PageRank will converge to the same value as it would had it started with a PageRank of only 1!


Finally you can play around with the damping factor d, which defaults to 0.85 as this is the value quoted in Brin and Page's research paper.


Why are there 20 lines of results?


Ever heard of the Google 'Dance'? You can see this demonstrated by looking at the differing results sets produced on www.google.com, www2.google.com and www3.google.com. If you study these results closely you will see that they change very slightly from day to day, and in particular during the period once a month when Google updates its index.


One of the reasons for this apparent dancing of results is because Google does not simply calculate the PageRank once for each page. After it has calculated the PageRank for the first time it will then put the resulting PageRanks back into the PageRank algorithm and calculate again. Google will go through this process of iteration many times before the results settle down to their 'true' values. When it has been completed, the results will then appear on the 'official' www.google.com domain.


(NB: While Google is updating its index, the updates also occur at different times across its various data centres. For a more in-depth explanation of the Google Dance, see the Google Dance Viewer.)


The PageRank Calculator defaults to 20 iterations, although you can increase this number should you choose. For a model of around 20 pages, 20 iterations is sufficient to see the PageRanks honing in on a single 'true' value. Google almost certainly performs many more.