PageRank is like a hipster friend. They're always trying to convince you that the new band they found will change your life, that the coffee shop they just started working at makes the best cup of joe, or that their new workout class will be the key to your fitness goals. The only thing that matters when it comes to whether or not they are correct about whatever they are attempting to convince you of is whether or not you trust them. You may need more caffeine if you don't yet trust them. There are numerous types of links to a webpage, and inbound links are the most significant in terms of PageRank. The Google search engine uses PageRank to measure the authority of a webpage. PageRank is proprietary, but it is generally thought that the number and importance of inbound links are important factors. It's no secret that Google is a powerful search engine. What is a mystery, however, is how it got so powerful. The answer lies in PageRank, the original concept behind Google's creation. It's based loosely on the system of citation: a paper referenced by many other papers is considered more authoritative/important than a paper with few sources. Given this line of thinking, a link to a site is similar to a citation in that it implies authority. Larry Page and Sergey Brin initially developed this principle while they were students at Stanford University. As they worked on their PhDs, they noticed that academic papers were often referenced by other articles especially older ones indicating which ones were more important or trustworthy. They realized this could also be applied to web pages, and thus PageRank was born! In 1998, Page and Brin incorporated Google as a company and began using PageRank to organize and rank web pages for search results.