Blog Myths Part 1: PageRank

Blog Myths Part 1: PageRank: "Very few things in the blogosphere are as misunderstood as Google PageRank. Everyone and their mate's mum likes to run their mouth on the subject... whereas about 9 out of 10 of them are rather clueless, I'd like to run through some of the misinformation out there, lest you miss out on one of your most powerful allies in the blogging game--Google juice. A couple of things before we begin When I say PageRank I do not mean 'how Google ranks pages', but specifically the patented linking algorithm that Google used to revolutionize web search about 5 years ago. PageRank is often abbreviated as 'PR' (which is somewhat confusing, since public relations is also abbreviated as such) How it works: PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important.' The scale goes from 0 to 10, with 10 being most important, and 0s and 1s making up most of the web. The homepages of many blogs (that have been promoted a bit) are in "