According to Google, their PR value defines the “uniquely democratic nature of the web” and “using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value.” Google considers links from one web page to another as a ‘vote’ for the linked page’s content. Google believes that a link from a relatively obscure website should carry a lower value than a link from a leading authority site. The relevance of search phrases and traffic also determine the value of the referring page. Google PageRank is the ‘weight’ Google places on a specific web page, based upon it’s authority, keyword relevance and traffic.

Google PR is expressed as a numerical value on a scale of 0 to 10. If a website has a PR0 to PR2, chances are it’s a new website. Websites with a PR3 to PR5 are fairly well established. PR6 websites are generally well established and have a lot of high-quality links to them. You won’t find many sites in the PR7 to PR10 range.

Is Google PR the ultimate measure of a website’s value, quality of content and linkability? Absolutely not! Some of the most useless link farm sites ever constructed, the ones that sell their PR6 links offer no content of any value to anyone, just pages and pages of exchange and affiliate links. Other beautiful blogs and sites with hundreds of well-written carefully researched keyword-rich articles will still receive a PR0 after a several  years on the web.

When we look for naturally occurring links we do consider the PageRank of the site, and particularly the page we’d like our article published on, but PR is only one of the many considerations.