PageRank Checker in 2017–2018

PageRank and PageRank Checkers

Rob Satrom

Published in

FeedbackWRENCH

12 min readNov 9, 2017

We’re heading into 2018, and PageRank Checker is being searched 14,800 times per month.

One thing is immediately clear -people are still searching for PageRank, Google PageRank, and PageRank checkers.

If you’re looking for a PageRank Checker in late 2017 or even 2018, we want to help you understand that things have changed a bit since 2014. Google’s PageRank is dead, meaning that finding a PageRank Checker is no longer relevant for SEO. But there are tools, both free and paid, that will show you Page Authority and Domain Authority, which are nearly the same thing as PageRank. In fact, we used what we consider to be the best keyword tool in 2018 to shed some light on why people are searching for PageRank and PageRank checkers. If you’re looking for a PageRank Checker — we’ll help you out below! Look How Many People Per Month Search About PageRank

That’s right, Google PageRank is seeing 18,000 searches a month, PageRank Checker is seeing 14,800 a month, and a host of other words that seem derivative of the old Google PageRank system are being continually searched as well. SKIP TO THE MEAT OF THE ARTICLE BY CLICKING: Moving Beyond PageRank — Domain Authority & Page Authority from MOZ 1 — How To Check your Website for Page Authority and Domain Authority 2 — SEO Tools to Use 3 — Checking the Keywords You Rank For — Google Webmaster Tools PageRank Died in 2014. But… PageRank has evolved, and now search engine optimization professionals use two other measurements called Page Authority and Domain Authority, which were developed by a company called Moz. PageRank Died and Moz Replicated it with Page Authority and Domain Authority Technically there are well over 200 ranking factors for Google, and they’re purposely secretive in regards to how they impact your Google rankings, but the industry has moved from measuring PageRank to now measuring a combination of Domain Authority and Page Authority. We’ll show you everything you need to know about Page Authority and Domain Authority below. Why Did You Search for a PageRank Checker? We know why you searched for a PageRank Checker — it’s because you’re wondering how to have success on Google. We genuinely want to help you and we’re attempting to make this page into a resource to help people understand how to measure your Google page ranking. Don’t expect Google to help you cheat its rankings. Google wants a great user experience for it’s search customers and understanding that principle is critical. You searched PageRank because you thought it would help you with SEO, so we’ll help you understand how you can measure the overall effectiveness of your website in the rest of this article. We will cover: 1 — What Happened to PageRank 2 — How To Check your Website Page Authority and Domain Authority for Free 3 — What are the Best SEO tools to Use? 4 — How to See What Keywords You Rank For What Happened to PageRank and PageRank Checkers? Post 2014, PageRank is dead, and site rankings are now measured by Page Authority and Domain Authority. What is PageRank? PageRank is supposedly one of the original algorithms that allowed Google search engines to move past keyword density and start to integrate backlinks and trust into the search engine results page. In the early days, a company or website could rank high in a search engine by jamming, cramming, and stuffing the selected keyword into their website. The algorithms were rudimentary and unable to consider more sophisticated factors. In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, spam and low-quality websites could easily rank on a search engine because they took advantage of the art of keyword stuffing. But then came PageRank… Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were at Stanford, and that’s when they developed what could be considered one of the greatest advances in search engine technology — rumors have it that PageRank was named after Larry Page. PageRank was an algorithm that would consider the quantity and quality of links internally and externally to score a website. This provided a new ranking factor to help reduce the problem of keyword stuffing. Google told the world a bit about their algorithm and even provided the PageRank toolbar to help organizations understand how it worked. There were two major flaws in Google’s publically accessible ranking factor tool: 1 — It was Becoming Irrelevant Because of How Sophisticated Google Search was Becoming 2 — It Showed the Levers to Pull in Order to Rank Your Website Since the PageRank tool provided clarity concerning the importance of backlinks, the world rushed to take advantage of it and make money by influencing the result pages. Before the more recent algorithm updates (meant to curb low-quality content) PageRank could be influenced by regular blogging with keyword optimized content, getting lots of backlinks from across the net, and getting citations. Google evolved because it had to prevent manipulation in order to protect the search customer’s user experience. Why did Google End PageRank? It was big news when Matt Cutts tweeted about PageRank not getting updated.

Why did Google decide to stop updating and supporting PageRank and it’s Google toolbar? We believe the answer is simple: Google wants to continue to focus on trustworthiness and content quality for search users. PageRank was instrumental in empowering Google to consider trust factors in its SERPs to combat keyword stuffing, but it was just one stage in the evolution of Google Search. Google Pursues its Customer’s Best Interests with Machine Efficiency What do I mean? Google aggressively eliminates search engine manipulation so that it’s site rankings are influenced by factors that benefit the searcher. In other words, Google’s main concern is to make sure that their search customers receive the most relevant, helpful, and trustworthy answer to their search query. If Google simply rewards the sites that know how to manipulate the ranking system through any other means, it means that search customers will more commonly have lower quality search engine experiences. Example: You Google “Apple Valley House Cleaner” What You Want From Google: If you Googled “Apple Valley House Cleaner” you would want Google’s “SERPs” or Search Engine Result Pages, to link to house cleaning companies that have a good reputation and are relevant to your area and needs. What You Wouldn’t Want from Google: What you wouldn’t want is Google serving up companies that were good at SEO — not good at satisfying customers and creating relevant website content for their customers. Remember the spam websites of the late 1990’s? Organizations, companies, and websites that aren’t trustworthy or relevant in real life shouldn’t have online relevance or authority given to them. When you’re not trustworthy or relevant, you’re just spam. Trustworthiness and relevance should matter most, not manipulation of ranking factors. Keeping this overall Google approach in mind is the foundation of “White Hat SEO,” and shows you the difference between optimizing for search engines and trying to manipulate search engines. So Google killed PageRank — making every PageRank Checker irrelevant. PageRank checkers are no longer relevant because Google’s search engine algorithms have evolved to an extent where the Page Ranking system was too simple and easy to manipulate. Google killed PageRank because by providing some clear measurements, it was allowing firms to manipulate the search engine. So when it decided to synthesize hundreds of other factors in their pursuit of trustworthiness and relevance, it needed to eclipse the PageRank toolbar and the Google rank numbers. But we know why you were looking for a PageRank Checker, and we’ll show you exactly how next.

Moving Beyond PageRank — Checking the Rank of Your Website After 2017

1 — How To Check your Website for Page Authority and Domain Authority

MOZBAR is the Way to Check your Website for Page Authority and Domain Authority.

First off, it’s important to note that Google has indicated that it considers hundreds of different factors and search engine signals when determining which pages it wants to serve up in a search engine result page. Google does not have an official ranking system anymore, but one of the major thought leaders and innovators in the search engine results community, Moz, has created a metric to measure and predict the authority associated with both domains and pages. MOZ Developed Domain Authority (DA)

Essentially, Moz has created a machine learning program that crawls sites in a similar fashion to how Google would and then combines a set of factors in order to come up with the numerical value concerning both the domain and the page authority. Moz Domain Authority and Page Authority is essentially the same thing as the old Google PageRank — but it’s evolving to try and provide relevant analysis. Basically, Moz Is measuring the quality and quantity of the links to your website in the same manner that Google’s PageRank had done in the past. It is measuring the overall authority of your entire domain and page.

Page Authority (PA) Rather than looking at the overall influence that a domain would have through Domain Authority, Page Authority is looking at specific web pages and how they would rank on a search engine results page. Both Domain Authority and Page Authority are measured on a point system and they are increasingly harder to improve over time. Going from 20 to 30 is much easier than going from 70 to 80. How are Domain Authority and Page Authority Measured? You can measure your Domain Authority or Page Authority by using the MOZ tools such as the Open Site Explorer or the free MOZBAR. Mozbar for Chrome is Essentially a Free PageRank Checker https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/eakacpaijcpapndcfffdgphdiccmpknp

While PageRank is essentially gone, MOZ has stepped in to provide the world with a predictive tool to measure the potential influence of a website. If you’re looking for a basic tool that you don’t have to pay money for, the MOZ Toolbar for Chrome is probably the best option. If you want to check your website for page authority or domain authority, use either the paid Open site explorer, or the free MOZBAR for Chrome. Measuring Trust with MozTrust Inside the Page and Domain Authority score is a set of proprietary factors to measure influence and trust. Google’s top priorities are to serve up trustworthy and relevant solutions to the queries of searches. How could Google measure the trustworthiness of a website? That’s exactly what Moz tries to reproduce in it’s MozTrust score.

In essence, measuring the trustworthiness of your site is kind of like measuring a good research paper.

Do you Cite “Trustworthy” Sources?
Does your Website Attract the Attention and Admiration of Others Through Backlinks?
Do Other Trustworthy Sites Link to You as an Authority on Subject Matter?
Can Your Information be Traced to Ultra-High Authority Sources Such as Governments, Universities, and Think Tanks?
Or Do You Just Make Stuff Up?

If you want to measure your Domain Authority use MozBar or their paid tools.

SEO Tools to Measure Trends & Perform Keyword and Backlink Research

2 — SEO Tools to Measure Trends & Perform Keyword and Backlink Research

You were searching for PageRank Checkers and hopefully the Moz tool helps you identify your overall Domain Authority, Page Authority, and page rankings. Search Engine Optimization is About: A- Creating Relevant Content B- Building Authority & Trustworthiness How to Create Relevant Content for SEO Your website needs to have resources and content that’s relevant to the queries people search for. If you want Google to serve your website up in a SERP, then the first step is to answer some questions by creating content. Without content, there’s nothing for Google to show. Identifying Keywords that Matter If you’re going to publish material, you’ll want to perform keyword and search query research to identify what’s relevant. Google’s Keyword Planning Tool shows estimated monthly search volume for keywords and phrases. Google is comfortable showing us what’s being searched because it wants us to spend money on PPC advertising. The first step in content creation needs to be your overall strategic buyer profile, but then you should start to identify keywords and phrases that:

Your Core Prospect Would Search For
Show Proper Intent
Are Relevant

Keyword research is the art of identifying which keywords will help you with your website ranking. This is what the website rankers and PageRank checkers of old were doing. After Identifying Keywords, Phrases, and Queries — Create Helpful, High Quality Content Write and publish lots of great content so that Google has something to latch onto. Perform good research, write well, create great pictures, and provide an excellent user experience — you’ll find that there’s a great deal of stuff you can do. Great pages include: quality content, great internal links, authoritative sources, sound technical web building, fast loading pages, speedy and mobile friendly, and submitted to Google. B- Building Trust for SEO Why are backlinks so important for SEO? Because they are little votes of confidence from other organizations. The more trustworthy and authoritative the website, the greater impact the vote of confidence would have. In a sense, a backlink is a bit like someone vouching for you or being a reference in an employment application process. Research Tools for SEO For those that are serious about this SEO thing, it comes down to research, execution, measurement, and continuous improvement. Good SEO includes some of the following research:

Performing Keyword Research
Identifying Potential Keywords from Competitors
Identifying the Difficulty of Each Keyword
Seeing the SERPs of a Keyword
Identifying Backlink Opportunities
Comparing the Keyword Rankings of Competitors

Authority Hacker SEO Tool Analysis

Authority Hacker, a major think tank and researcher in the search engine optimization world, has compiled the best comparison of seo tools in 2017. They Compared:

They Rated Each Tool According to the Following Criteria:

Keyword Suggestions
Search Trend Measurements
Keyword Difficulty Measurements
SERP Analysis
Request Limitations
Overall Speed

Their Findings? The Best Cheap SEO Tool is KW Finder at $29/month ($12/if annually) The Best Premium SEO Tool was Ahrefs at $99/month

Here is a summary of their ratings for each SEO tool.

Hats off to Authority Hacker for the research and hard work on the reports, head to their site and check out all their articles and resources. Authority Hacker is one of the most dominant SEO blogs out there.

How to Measure Keyword Ranking

3 — How to Measure Keyword Ranking

Google provides us with the best tools to measure our keyword rankings.

The tools mentioned above will provide you with the best tools to measure competitor keywords, but to measure your own keyword rankings, we recommend a free and simple option. How do you measure your own keyword ranking? By using the Google Webmaster tools. Google Webmaster Tools is probably the most accurate and easy way to see what keywords you’ve ranked for and what position you’re in. Not only will it provide you with the keywords you’re ranking for, but it will also show you how many clicks you’ve received on that particular keyword during different periods. This is super helpful. Here’s a walkthrough of Google Webmaster Tools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoxU5kz15Kc THE BOTTOM LINE: If you came across this page because you wanted more information about PageRank, hopefully, we’ve helped you understand that PageRank and PageRank checkers are dead, but that there are some good tools available to show you how you’re doing with Google.

Originally published at FeedbackWrench Minneapolis Web Design, SEO and Marketing.