What is the difference between PageRank (PR) and SERP?

August 9, 2010

Since I will be talking about SEO on this blog quite a lot, I think it’s good to clear up some terminology first. Let’s start with PageRank and SERP.

Usually when I ask marketers what PageRank is, they reply:

“Isn’t this the position of your site in Google?”

Answer: no, not exactly.

What is PageRank then?

PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Let’s call it Google’s rating or grade for your webpage (0 = lowest, 10 = highest).

Google is secretive about how they calculate PageRank. In a later post I will discuss what we know of PageRank and how you can influence it.

As a stand alone PageRank doesn’t mean much. Compare it to a grade the teacher gives you for your exam. One exam usually doesn’t determine soley whether or not you pass the entire year. It’s the same with PageRank.

PageRank plays a certain role in Google’s secret algorithm. Along with about 200 (!) other factors. A mix of all these factors determines how high your website ranks in Google’s search engine results. And results are always based on: keywords.

And that’s when we start talking about SERPs

SERP means Search Engine Ranking Page. This is what you look at multiple times a day. It’s the (first) page of results Google gives you when you are searching for a keyword or a keyword combination.

For example: suppose you have the No 3 spot on the 1st page of Google on the term ‘social media marketing’. This means that your website has a SERP 3 on this specific combination of keywords.

PageRank & SERP summarized

PageRank is the grade (1 to 10) your web page gets from headmaster Google.

SERP is the position of your website in Google’s search engine results based on a certain keyword combination.

Tagged as: Algorithm, Blog, Google, Keywords, PageRank, SEO, SERP

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  • Nilesh Kindarle

    thanks for providing good information..

    thanks………………….
    nilesh….

  • http://www.michielgaasterland.com/ MichielGaas

    Your welcome! Thanks for your comment.

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