Measurement
PageRank
PageRank is an algorithm developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, originally described in their 1998 paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine." It calculates the importance of web pages based on the quantity and quality of inbound links, treating links as "votes." Google discontinued the public PageRank toolbar score in 2016 but continues using PageRank internally.
While public PageRank scores are no longer available, proxy metrics from Ahrefs (Domain Rating, URL Rating), Moz (Domain Authority, Page Authority), and Majestic (Trust Flow, Citation Flow) approximate link authority. These metrics are accessible via their respective platforms and browser extensions.
Authority Links
Related Terms
Measurement
Citation Flow
Developed by Majestic, Citation Flow is a metric that is calculated using the number of backlinks on a website.
Measurement
Domain Authority
A third-party proprietary score (Moz DA, Ahrefs DR, SEMrush AS) on a 1–100 scale that estimates a domain's competitive ranking strength based on link profile quantity and quality — not a metric Google uses directly.
Link Building
Link Juice
Link juice is the ranking potential distributed among the relevant pages or websites through hyperlinks.
Measurement
Trust Flow
Developed by Majestic, Trust Flow is a metric that measures the trustworthiness of websites.