From Wendy Boswell,
Your Guide to Web Search.
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PageRank, which is largely based upon the number and quality of backlinks a webpage has, is an important factor in how well a particular webpage ranks within the Google search results. Since webmasters can spend much of their time worrying about PageRank, an important question is: how important is PageRank, really?

PageRank Only One Piece of a Larger Puzzle

Many webmasters will tell you from experience that other factors besides PageRank, such as keyword density and placement, have taken a larger role in website ranking. No one will argue that PageRank has become irrelevant, but there is significant evidence to suggest that PageRank is not quite as important of a factor in website ranking as it once was.

Check Your Google PageRank

To illustrate this point, I utilized a very useful tool you can find at PRlookup.com. The tool returns regular Google query results with one interesting addition – they also give the pagerank for every webpage. Thus, you can type in any word or phrase and see the pagerank of those webpages that rank well (or not so well) for that keyword. Looking at the results, you probably notice something almost immediately. Some sites with low PRs do surprisingly well in the results, while some higher PR sites do quite poorly.

Some of this difference can be contributed to sheer content – that is, how many times, and in what manner, the keywords you entered actually show up on the webpage. Google takes a close look at keyword usage and density in determining ranking. However, some pages clearly have very close keyword densities, yet in some cases the page with the lower pagerank will somehow still receive a better ranking.

This article about Google PageRank is continued on page 2.