"Google PageRank is probably one of the most important algorithms ever developed for the Web. With billions of existing pages and millions of pages generated every day, the search issue in the Web is more complex than you probably think it is. PageRank, only one of hundreds of factors used by Google to determine best search results, helps to keep our search clean and efficient. But how is it actually done? How does Google PageRank work, which factors do have an impact on it and which don't? And what do we really know about PageRank?

PageRank has only ever been an approximation of the quality of a web page and has never had anything to do with the measuring of the topical relevance of a web page. Topical relevance is measured with link context and on-page factors such as keyword density, title tag, and everything else."

The only purpose that Pagerank seems to be serving is making money by high Pagerank websites in selling links. High Pagerank does not necessarily mean more traffic which every webmaster / website owner desires. High traffic is contributed by your website appearing high in the Search Engine Results.

Most of you reading this may be smiling at the above thought. But I have actually seen many a websites having no or low pagerank doing well. This is because those websites appear high up in the Google! Serps, in the first three results pages. I will give just two examples of nil importance of Pagerank but high position in SERPs.

Search for ?Perl database script? in Google! search. You will find dbperl.com in the top-10 results. Click on the results for this website. What is its Pagerank, zero or not so?

Similarly search for ?1 way link? or ?3 way link? in Google! search. Again, you will find toptenserp.com in the top-10 results for both these phrases. However, clicking in the results on toptenserp.com will show you that this site too is a pagerank zero website. I hope most will be convinced in not buying links and wasting their money.

Instead website owners should provide good information on their websites and do on-page optimization. In addition they should do off-page optimization. The latter, off-page optimization concerns link popularity. To have high link popularity the website should have a large number of backlinks.

Here is a jewel from another similar article:-

?Linking to other sites using PR (PageRank) as the determining factor and or any factor in your decision

This is a false assumption. Don't waste your time using the Google Toolbar. PR has nothing to do with where your site is listed in a given search. Want some proof? Drill down to some of this sites xxxxxxxxxxxxx pages which opens in a new window, extract a few keywords and search. In some cases this site is in the top 5 listings and my page is PR2. Still not convinced? Fasten your hard disk. Run a search for "free webmaster tools" and you will see that this site is currently listed in the top 6 and the PR for my home page is only 6.