Larry Page invented the concept of Page Rank while at Stanford University and was later helped by Sergey Brin. The two of them eventually founded Google (named as a play on the word googol ? a very large number) and trade marked the term PageRank. It applies to the popularity of a web page based upon the number of other web pages that link to it. This applies on the premise that these links are due to the perceived popularity, or relevance, of that site to the search term or keyword being used.

Now, however, PageRank is a synthetic measurement based upon how many links a webmaster can contrive to achieve to any one page on a particular website, and has little to do with the relevance or popularity of that page. It is possible to contrive a high PageRank through a linking strategy that has little to do with the content of the page, or relevance to the keyword in question.

The emphasis that Google and other search engines gives to web pages with a high number of such contrived links, therefore, is open to question. There are indications that PageRank is becoming less important in the overall index listing of a web page. However, article marketing will never in the foreseeable future be overtaken by any other strategy in the search engine listing race.

This is because search engines are highly unlikely to relegate linking strategies to the graveyard simply because of reciprocal liking strategies. It is more likely, and might even be happening now, that links from one web page that are reciprocated with links from another are both negated. The only links that are included in the search engine algorithmic calculations will then be the genuine ones. Those that are provided by directories that do not demand a link back. Those that are provided by webmasters that copy your article to their web page as content.

In other words, it is likely that future Google Page Rank is determined by genuine non-reciprocal links that article marketing is the ideal strategy to generate. All links that the spiders see as being reciprocated will be excluded from the calculation.