PageRank was Google's first big idea: a page is important when important pages link to it. For years everyone could see the score as a green bar in the Google Toolbar, from 0 to 10. Google stopped updating that bar in 2013 and removed it from the toolbar in 2016. The link signal still lives inside Google's ranking systems, but nobody outside Google can see the number any more.
Where did PageRank come from?
Larry Page and Sergey Brin described PageRank in 1998, in their Stanford paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". The name is a pun: it ranks pages, and it was Larry Page's idea. Stanford patented the method, and Google licensed it. Search engines of the time mostly counted words on a page, which was easy to fake. PageRank added something a page owner could not write into their own HTML: what the rest of the web thought of the page.
What did PageRank measure?
Think of every link as a vote. A vote from a page that gets many votes itself counts more. The votes a page can give are shared out among its links, so a page with 100 outgoing links passes less to each one than a page with 5.
The paper explains this with a "random surfer": someone who clicks links at random and now and then jumps to a random page instead. A page's PageRank is the chance that this surfer is on it at any moment. The jump (the paper uses a damping factor of 0.85, so a 15% chance to jump) keeps pages that link only to each other from piling up score forever.
- Links count, not words. PageRank says nothing about whether a page is relevant to a search. Google always combined it with many other signals.
- Quality of links beats quantity. One link from a well-linked page can pass more than many links from pages nobody links to.
- It is per page, not per site. The toolbar showed the score of the page you were on, not of the whole domain.
What was the green toolbar bar?
From 2000, the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer showed a small green bar with a score from 0 to 10 for every page you visited. Google never published how the toolbar number was calculated from the real value, and it was widely believed to be on a logarithmic scale: going from 5 to 6 took far more links than going from 1 to 2. The public number was also updated only a few times a year, so it was always out of date.
Webmasters watched it closely anyway. My first website reached PageRank 5 after I submitted it to reciprocal and paid directories, and at the time that felt like a real achievement. I had no other way to see how Google valued my site.
Why did Google hide the score?
Because the number was public, people bought and sold links by PageRank. Link sellers priced their links by the green bar, directories and blogs advertised their PageRank, and many links were placed only to pass score, not to help a reader. That is the kind of link Google's spam policies now call link spam.
Google answered in steps:
- 2005: nofollow. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft introduced rel="nofollow" so sites could mark links that should not pass credit, starting with blog comments. Since 2019 Google also asks for rel="sponsored" on paid links and rel="ugc" on user content.
- December 2013: the last update. The public toolbar score stopped changing. Google's spokespeople said it was unlikely ever to be updated again.
- March 2016: removed. Google confirmed it was removing Toolbar PageRank, and a month later it turned off the data feed that third-party tools still read.
Does Google still use PageRank?
Yes, in a changed form. Google's guide to its ranking systems lists link analysis and PageRank and says PageRank "has evolved a lot since" its early days and continues to be part of its core ranking systems. What disappeared in 2016 was the public number, not the idea that links pass value. Nobody outside Google knows today's formula, and any tool that claims to show "real Google PageRank" is guessing.
What can you use instead?
| Metric | Who makes it | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Search Console Links report | The links Google actually found to your site and your most linked pages | |
| Open PageRank | DomCop, from public Common Crawl link data | A 0–10 score per domain, free; try it in our PageRank checker |
| Domain Authority (Moz), Domain Rating (Ahrefs) | SEO tool companies | Their own link scores, useful for comparing sites, not Google's |
After PageRank disappeared, one of my sites reached a Moz Domain Authority of 60. It is a nice number to see, but like every third-party score it is a model of links, not a ranking factor. Use these scores to compare sites and to spot pages that attract links, and spend your effort on content that people want to link to.
Toolbar PageRank is retired, but the lesson it taught is still true: links from respected pages matter, and buying them to game a score breaks Google's rules. For the full story of how links and rankings changed over the years, see the other entries in our Google algorithm history.
Frequently asked questions
Can I still check my Google PageRank?
No. Google removed the public score in 2016 and has not shared it since. Tools that show a "PageRank" today use their own data, such as Open PageRank from Common Crawl links.
Is PageRank still a ranking factor?
Google says PageRank, in an evolved form, is still part of its core ranking systems. It is one signal among many, and the number is hidden.
Was toolbar PageRank the same as the real PageRank?
No. The toolbar showed a rounded 0–10 version that was updated only a few times a year, so it was always an old snapshot of the real value Google used.
