Search engines like Yandex and Google operate on the premise that the more external links a site has, the more authoritative and valuable it is to visitors. This is a simplified explanation, leaving out the various nuances specific to each search engine.
When search engines return results for a keyword, they sort them based on two parameters: relevance and the quality of external links. Relevance means how well the found pages match the topic of the site for the given keyword. The quality of external links refers to the credibility of the linking sites.
What Are tIC and PR? And Their Features.
Let’s start with PR. PR stands for Page Rank, calculated by Google for each page individually. It is determined by the quality and quantity of pages linking to it, as well as the link text and content. You can find out the Page Rank of any page using the Google Toolbar, which displays the Page Rank on a scale from 0 to 10.
In practice, Page Rank is used to evaluate a site’s promotion potential and to determine the competitiveness within your niche.
tIC, or Thematic Index of Citation, is calculated by Yandex for the entire site and indicates its authority relative to other thematically similar sites. tIC is used for ranking sites in the Yandex directory but does not affect search results in the Yandex search engine.
One key difference is that tIC is calculated for the entire site, unlike PR, which is determined for each individual page. In practice, you will use tIC for the same purposes as Page Rank. You can find out the citation index using the Yandex Bar.
This explanation is quite general. Delving into the specifics could take hours, and we still might not cover everything, as search engines have their own nuances that they keep confidential to prevent misuse. Therefore, we won’t delve into SEO techniques to increase tIC or PR, to avoid premature disappointment.
Let’s consider this an introduction for beginners who are just starting to familiarize themselves with these concepts.