PageRank & SEO Glossary

The world of PageRank and search authority is full of jargon. This glossary defines the terms used across this site in plain language, so nothing here needs a decoder ring. For deeper reading, follow the links into the relevant guides.

PageRank

Google's original algorithm for scoring the importance of web pages by analysing the links between them. Named after co-founder Larry Page. See What is PageRank? for the full explanation.

Toolbar PageRank

The public-facing version of PageRank, shown as a green 0-to-10 bar in the Google Toolbar from 2000. It was a delayed, simplified snapshot of the internal score. Frozen in 2013 and removed in 2016.

Damping factor

A value (typically around 0.85) in the PageRank formula representing the chance that a random web surfer keeps clicking links rather than jumping to a random page. It keeps the calculation stable and realistic.

Backlink

A link from one website to another. Backlinks are the raw material of PageRank and of every authority metric that followed. More on how they flow in the PageRank crawl guide. See also the reference overview on Wikipedia.

Referring domain

A distinct website that links to yours. Ten links from one referring domain count as one referring domain. This is usually a more meaningful figure than the total backlink count.

Link equity ("link juice")

The authority passed from one page to another through a link. It is divided among a page's outgoing links, so pages with fewer links pass more through each one.

Anchor text

The visible, clickable words of a link. Descriptive anchor text helps search engines understand what the linked page is about.

Nofollow

A link attribute (rel="nofollow") introduced in 2005 that tells search engines not to pass authority through a link. Later joined by the more specific sponsored and ugc values.

Fake PageRank

A score artificially inflated by trickery — classically a 302 redirect to a high-PageRank page. Covered in the fake PageRank guide, with modern equivalents to watch for.

Domain Authority (DA) / Domain Rating (DR)

Popular third-party 0-to-100 authority estimates from independent SEO companies. They are not Google metrics and are not comparable across different tools. See what replaced PageRank.

Trust Flow / Citation Flow

A paired third-party metric that separates the quality of a site's links (trust) from their quantity (citation). Useful for spotting profiles that are large but low-quality.

E-E-A-T

Google's shorthand for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — qualities its guidelines associate with high-quality pages. Not a score, but a useful lens for judging a site.

Organic traffic

Visitors who arrive from unpaid search results. Genuine authority almost always translates into real organic traffic, which is why it's a valuable cross-check on any authority score.