Most of you that are really into the details of blogging and running a website probably know what PR stands for. For those of you that don’t, however, shame on you. PR stands for (Google) PageRank. Many bloggers obsess over it while many others really couldn’t care any less about it. Many think it means nothing, while others prioritize it to number 1 on their to-do list.
What Is PageRank?
Alrighty. For all of you readers out there that don’t know what Google PageRank is, let me try to edumecate you. Every few months, Google crawls every site on the internet and ranks it from 0 - 10. The higher the number the better. (Google’s homepage is ranked 10.) Google’s algorithm to calculate PageRank is either very complicated, or very buggy. I say this because many bloggers out there totally hate Google because their site is ranked 1 or 2, even though after they go through some of the math themselves, they realize that they are doing better than PR 3 and 4 sites!
One major player in a site’s PageRank is how many quality backlinks it has. (Quality is the key word here.) Backlinks are links on other sites that redirect to your site, simply put. So for example, if you had a few PR 2 and PR 3 blogs linking to your blog, you’d probably be rated a PR 2 (3?). It all depends. Here’s a chart that puts it very simply.
Click to enlarge.
Many people think PageRank is useless, and I somewhat agree. One of the reasons I think it’s not useless, however, is because of the fact other people think it’s important. For example, an advertiser wants to put their ad on one of two blogs. One blog is a PR 2 and charges $x. The other is a PR 5 blog and charges $y. They know that PageRank is important, and they look for that when purchasing ad space (for the quality backlink). They will probably go for the PR 5 blog, even if it costs more money, just so it helps to boost their site in the standings.
ForTheLose.org is a PageRank 4 blog. How? I will never know. Like I said, Google’s PageRank algorithm is either very complicated, or very buggy. I’ve never done any serious link building for the site, so I don’t understand how the PageRank is so high. (Note: getting anything above PageRank 4 is usually quite tough, and definitely requires alot of effort.)
To all you advertisers out there, there is one more ad text link for $2 a month left in the sidebar 
. Get your PR 4 backlink now 
!
Alright I’m done.
Thinking ahead, tomorrow’s post will also somewhat revolve around Google… that’s funny… 
