PageRank is Google’s original algorithm for measuring a page’s importance by the links pointing at it. It still runs, Google still names it in its documentation, and the public score died in 2016.
How it works
The idea is recursive: a page is important if important pages link to it. A link passes a share of the linking page’s own authority, divided among its outbound links, with a damping factor applied at each hop so authority decays across the chain.
Two consequences follow directly, and both are practical:
- A link from a page with few outbound links passes more than one from a page with hundreds. A sitewide footer link on a 10,000-page site is worth far less than a contextual link from an article.
- Authority flows through your own site as well as into it. This is why internal linking is a genuine ranking lever rather than just navigation, and why it’s the one you fully control.
What changed
| Era | State |
|---|---|
| 1998 | Published by Page and Brin; the basis of Google |
| 2000-2016 | Toolbar PageRank visible publicly as a 0 to 10 score |
| 2009 | Nofollow sculpting closed: divided equity now evaporates rather than redistributing |
| 2016 | Toolbar PageRank retired; third-party metrics fill the gap |
| Today | Still named in Google’s ranking systems documentation, weighting unknown |
Third-party metrics such as Domain Rating and Domain Authority arrived to fill the visibility gap. They are useful approximations built from third-party crawls. None of them is PageRank, and Google does not use them, which is covered in page authority.
How much do links still matter?
More than SEO fashion suggests and less than the 2010s assumed. Ahrefs’ correlation work consistently finds pages with more referring domains get more traffic, and that relationship is circular: visible pages attract links.
Backlinko’s correlation study reached similar conclusions and is graded disputed in our library for the same reason. Correlation studies cannot separate cause from effect, and a decade of SEO advice was built on treating them as though they could.
What is better established: Google’s link analysis systems are named in its own documentation, and the 2024 leak referenced a stored site-level authority value. The honest summary is that links clearly matter, and nobody outside Google can tell you how much.
Common mistakes
- Treating Domain Rating as a ranking factor. It’s a third-party estimate Google has never seen.
- Chasing high-DR links regardless of relevance. A relevant link from a modest site usually beats an irrelevant one from a big site.
- Sculpting with nofollow. Stopped working in 2009 and now leaks equity instead of redirecting it.
- Neglecting internal links while spending heavily on external ones. You already have authority; most sites distribute it badly.
- Assuming links are all that matters. Relevance, intent and quality decide plenty of results where link profiles are comparable.
Related
Google’s ranking systems covers where link analysis sits today. See also anchor text, nofollow and off-page SEO.