When I do a Google search, I see PR 0 or blank PR sites being in front ot PR 1,2,3 and even 4 sometimes, why does that happen? thanks
please read this post. pagerank increased, the number of visitors fell(google serp). http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1298971
PR and search engine position are not the same thing. Just because a website has a high PR, does not mean that is determined to be the most relevant website for the keyword terms that a search engine user is search for. Optimizing a website to increase search engine position and optimizing a website to increase Google PageRank, need to be considered as (2) two different processes. Google updates the system that is used to calculate PageRank every few months. However Google makes calculated updates to determine search engine position for websites based on the relevancy of keywords and keyword phrases, constantly everyday. I hope this helps, if you have any further questions and/or concerns, feel free to post them.
Thanks for the replies. It definitely helps the way I will look at things now, so if I understand correctly I don't have to put too much emphasis on getting a high PR but to get back links from sites with unique content even if they are low PR's, and gradually increase them, right? Thanks
Right. It is important to focus on establishing relevancy of the pages within your website. If you develop and optimize your website properly, PR will increase in time. To help increase PR, I would recommend posting a few outbound links within your website that have a high PR. You will also want to post optimized back links to your website and trade links with at least one very relevant website.
Becasue Google doesn't weight very much on PR. It is it's own mechanism so if it did use it for ranking then the sites with the high PR will always be on top. Its a myth!