PageRank Increase

PageRank (or PR) Increase

In this section we have set up two separate sites - with one site linking to a page (named Page8) on the other site. A picture of the spreadsheet can be found here).

First iteration

We have also guessed the PageRank transferred from one site to the other would be 0,85 * (1/5) = 0.17. If we look at the first iteration (picture to the right), we see that Page8 has leaped from 1 to 1.17 - exactly as we predicted.

Second iteration

Page8 links to the other 4 pages in our little site, so in the next iteration these 4 pages increase their PageRank. So the total PageRank of this mini-site is no longer 5 or 5.17, but 5.3145.

Third iteration

These 4 pages link back to Page8 - so Page8 gets a PageRank boost, which it will be sure to pass back to the other 4 pages - and so forth and so on.

Many iterations later

Let's skip forward a few hundred iterations and behold. The total PageRank is now 5,94552. If this were a more real-life set-up, where the first site had inbound links from the rest of the Internet, the increase would be even higher.

If you try changing the link structure, you'll see that it doesn't make any difference - as long as there is a link structure. In theory (but maybe not in Google-practice) a single-page site can increase PageRank by linking to itself.

So we have just "created" some nice PageRank - or have we? Let me remind you of the disclaimer at the bottom of this page - creating our own PageRank would not only violate the laws of mathematics, but also the trademark of Google Inc.

Let's take a look at the other side of the coin: the PageRank leakage