Which factors do have an impact on PageRank?
1. Each inbound link is important to the overall total. Except banned sites. “PageRank is a form of a voting system. A link to a page is a vote for that page. Higher PageRank pages are viewed by Google as more important. Their votes are given more value by Google — much more value, in some cases. In general, the more voting links, the stronger the PageRank.”
2. Adding new pages can decrease Page Rank. “The effect is that, whilst the total PageRank in the site is increased, one or more of the existing pages will suffer a PageRank loss due to the new page making gains. Up to a point, the more new pages that are added, the greater is the loss to the existing pages. With large sites, this effect is unlikely to be noticed but, with smaller ones, it probably would.”
3. Page Rank can decrease. “You can lose some important links that are no longer linking to your site. PR loss can also occur if some of your linking partners also experience a drop in their own PR, possibly setting off a chain reaction of lower PageRank all through the immediate linking network.”
4. Links from and to high quality related sites are important. “The more closely related the pages, the higher the PageRank amount transferred.” “Linking to high quality sites shows the search engines your site is very useful to your visitors. Unless your site has been around for years and is well established and trusted by Google, this factor will have an adverse effect on your site’s overall ranking. Linking only to high quality content sites will give your site an edge over your competition.”
5. Incoming Links from popular sites are important. If pages linking to you have a high PageRank then your page gains some part of their reputation.
6. Site can be banned if it links to banned sites. “Be extremely careful of any out-going links from your site. Don’t link to bad neighborhoods (link farms, banned sites, etc.) Google will penalize you for bad links so always check the PageRank of the sites you’re linking to from your site.”
7. Illegal activities will penalize your PageRank and possibly ban your site from Google. “Hidden text, deceptive redirects, cloaking, automated link exchanges, or anything else against Google’s quality guidelines” can ban your site from Google.
8. Myth: the higher your google PageRank, the better the results. “While pages with a higher PageRank do tend to rank better, it is perfectly normal for a site to appear higher in the results listings even though it has a lower PageRank than competing pages. [..] Google examines the context of your incoming links, and only those links that relate to the specific keyword being searched on will help you achieve a higher ranking for that keyword.”
9. Related high ranked web-sites count stronger (or don’t they?). “One-way inbound links from websites with topics that are related to your website’s topic will help you gain a higher Page Rank.” Other one-way inbound links from pages with high page rank but unrelated topics do help a little, but not nearly as much.
10. Different pages from a site can have different Page Rank. “Search engines crawl and index webpages not websites, that is why your page rank may vary from page to page within your website.”
