Google’s page rank is probably the most observed, mysterious, important, and craved statistic in the entire online marketing field. This might be especially true among the vast numbers of entrepreneurs, Webmasters, small businesses, medium businesses, thriving businesses, struggling businesses, online stores, service sites, and other enterprises not up to the level of clout enjoyed by Amazon.com, eBay, Yahoo!, and other Internet juggernauts. For nearly all online ventures, visibility in Google is a marketing imperative, and page rank determines a site’s visibility.

Page rank is the result of Google’s internal ranking algorithm. Although page rank’s formulas and specific results aren’t publicized, enough is known about it (partly through trial and error, and partly through Google’s sparse proclamations) to catalyze entire marketing niches devoted to raising a site’s page rank. The value of improving a site’s page rank lies in positioning: Highly ranked pages appear close to the top of Google’s search results lists. Positioning is determined also by which search page is being displayed, and there are as many unique search pages as there are keyword combinations. The goal is to place your site high on search results pages that closely correlate with your site’s subject.

A high page rank always boosts a site’s position relative to similar sites. Jockeying for position in search engines is not a new sport. To the contrary, webmasters have engaged in the contest for high search-result positions for years. Google’s increasing dominance in the field has concentrated the most meaningful screen real estate onto a single engine’s result pages, and competition for that space has become ferocious. Winning techniques have become more demanding, precise, and artful. The field of search engine optimization (SEO) covers other engines besides Google, but much more attention is paid to Google’s search results than to those of any other single engine.

Competition for Googlespace is cruel. Broad subject areas such as music, news, or baseball are jammed with major industrial sites, and breaking into the rarefied atmosphere clotted with corporate behemoths such as MTV.com, CNN.com, and MLB.com is, for the most part, impossible. Google’s default display setting shows only 10 results on the user’s search page. (This setting can be extended to 100 listings, but many people don’t bother.) Google’s reputation for delivering the best sites, fast, discourages casual searching beyond the first page. So the pressure is on to break into the top 10. The good news is that getting near the top of the list is doable for narrower, precisely targeted subjects. It’s not unusual for sole proprietors of commercial sites to score the top position in a Google search of targeted keyword phrases.

Google strives to be, and largely is, democratic. The ranking of Google search results is based on merit and popularity. Any Web site, large or small, can gain favourable positioning by leveraging good content, diligent networking, and smart optimizing.

One key to higher page rank is getting linked on other sites. Page rank is a complicated equation, and largely a secret one, but Google acknowledges that the number of links pointing to a site is the largest single factor of that site’s page rank. The two major marketing efforts to undertake when building your business with Google is to, create incoming links, and optimize your site. In theory, any single page currently crawled by Google (that is, currently in the index) that links to your page or site is enough to send Google’s spider crawling toward you. In practice, you want as many incoming links as possible, both to increase your site’s chance of being crawled and to improve your site’s page rank once in the index.

Developing incoming links (from other pages to yours) is a major part of the Google optimization process. Online entrepreneurs seeking to drive traffic to their sites through Google spend immense portions of their development time networking. This networking is accomplished the old-fashioned way (by introducing oneself and talking to other webmasters) and also through more impersonal means.