PR is a gimmick for publicity purposes. focus on baclinks which will improve your SERPS and hence traffic
Good possible exception noted, SSandecki. Here's another thought I often chew on that I would like to throw out there for discussion. We have long known what Matt Cutts said about backlinks being very important for search rankings. But here's the thought that I ponder: Realistically, I highly doubt that the Google algorithm does a new, global backlink calculation every time someone searches for some word or phrase. That would take forever! IMHO, it seems more likely that the algorithm responds to the surfer's search by using some more immediately available measurement of backlinks — that is, pagerank. Could it be that "real" PR is actually what the Google algorithm uses as its moment-to-moment measurement of backlink strength when surfers do searches? Any thoughts?
This discussion led me to search a paper I read years ago (2000-2001).. I just remembered the author's last name (haveliwala) http://newdbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/1999-31 This was a method proposed to calculate pagerank. I think the guy later joined big G. There are other interesting papers: http://newdbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/2003-29 and http://newdbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/2002-6 that are relevant to this discussion. Now, time for my two cents A separate counter for backlinks for a given phrase might be maintained and used for determining rank in search results. If I get 100s of high PR backlinks for a website with incorrect anchor text and surrounding text, the site will get a good PR but will not feature in SERPs. People see SERP benefit from building backlinks and chasing PR because the backlink anchor and surrounding text is often relevant for their target keywords. You can see many PR4-5 web directories featuring no where for the word 'web directory'. I think that's a classic example. As ssandecki noted it's possible to get high/mild-high PR with millions (I think thousands would be fine) low level pages.
You are right Jitendra..I have seen such example with my 2 directories..one is PR 1 and one is PR 4..now PR 1 directory is a new directory and gets around 100 UV per day and PR 4 gets around 80 UV per day. PR 4 directory is a niche directory and more than a year old. PR1 gets around 1% traffic from Google, whereas PR 4 gets around 22%, this is because PR 4 comes within 1-2 pages in some good keyword phrases. Also PR 4 gets around 40% from other sites, rest are direct. I am giving these figures to explain how PR is related to keywords, and keywords to SERP and SERPs to Traffic. There is definitely a good relationship between PR and SERPs Traffic(main traffic source unless you are big name), otherwise PR has no meaning. Krish