Active webmasters constantly look for ways to ensure that their websites appear at the top of search engine results. Each search engine has its own algorithm to determine the order of search results, but Google uses a measurement of importance call PageRank.

PageRank is a score out of ten of the importance of your website compared to other websites. PageRank is base on;

1. the number of hyperlinks pointing to your website and
2. the value of those hyperlinks

Top ranked sites like Yahoo, MSN, and Google have PageRanks of 9/10. The value of a hyperlink is based on the PageRank of the page containing the hyperlink and the relevancy of the page to your website. Google has a brief description of this at http://www.google.com/technology

No one outside of Google really knows how PageRank is determined because it is a closely held corporate secret and the algorithms change periodically.

When webmasters take action to increase their PageRank, they may be attempting to defeat the intention of PageRank's attempt to measure importance. Webmasters have created reciprocal link schemes, link renting schemes and other schemes in an attempt to increase their PageRank. Google has countered by changing their algorithms and keeping the details of the system secret.

To determine the number of hyperlinks to your website, do a Yahoo search and enter

         link:http://www.yourDomainName.com

You will not see the same results with a Google Search because Google does not display all hyperlinks.

The Value of Hyperlinks

Google has tried to reduce of value of certain kinds of links.

1. Link farm pages filled with many hyperlinks
2. Purchased links that have nearby text such as Partners and Advertisement
3. Hyperlinks from websites that have little relevancy to your website

When Google is in the process of changing their algorithm, you should expect to see fluctuations in your PageRank.

The correct approach is to proactively create as many hyperlinks from relavant websites as possible.