Google PageRank is a term that's bandied about a lot in search-optimisation circles, and to an extent it's like referring to the Roswell UFO. Some people think they know exactly what it's all about, others are more doubtful, and the story given out by those actually in a position to know is incomplete and open to question.

There are some places on the web where you can check the PageRank of your site, and their results seem to tally with common sense. Whatever shadowy source they are using, both PRchecker.info and Page-Rank-Lookup.com concur that www.computing.co.uk scores 7/10 and that sister site vnunet.com scores 6/10. Our much less important domains achieve suitably lower figures. A holding page at www.businesscomputerworld.co.uk scores a lowly 2/10, for example.

But these results make me question whether the bald PageRank score is as important as the SEO people would have us believe. I have accurate traffic figures for all our domains and www.vnunet.com gets quite a bit more views than www.computing.co.uk, and indeed gets more visitors from Google search referrals. So there is more to traffic generation than meets the PageRank-obsessed eye.

It's also peculiar that defunct sites seem to hang on to their PageRank scores for a long time after they've expired. We ceased publishing Network IT Week and Network News years ago, for example, yet both of their home page URLs continue to notch up scores of 7/10 - better scores than the highly active and regularly updated vnunet.com.

It's all very odd. Spooky, even.