I had to start a thread on this because I'm getting conflicting answers. If you have a new website with PR 0 and then you become a PR3 - shouldn't this allow you to move up in the Google search results for your keywords? I thought this was the whole point of page ranking but some people are saying search results have nothing to do with page ranking. If they are unrelated then why the obsession with pank ranking? Just thinking out loud and wanting to understand the matter better. I think I'm currently in the sandbox anyway so from what i understand my PR3 will not do me any good until I get out? Thanks!
i think you'll find many informed people in this forum and others that often say forget about pagerank.. for some reason you have decided to buy into the fact that higher page rank equals higher rankings. this is not true and never has been. obsession with page rank is pointless and eventually leads to being discouraged. you have since learned this. higher page rank is may be nice because it shows you've built up a popular site and maybe gives you some more credibility when it climbs higher than average.. but otherwise, it's a non factor. keep working on your site and your rankings will climb.
When the toolbar (pagerank) was introduced, PageRank via the toolbar did matter. It meant that higher PR equals important page and, hence, better rankings. A lot of people to this day still believe this is the way it is. It has now changed into a tool to keep the webmaster community at bay. It's a reassuring factor. Nothing more. Does it mean anything? Not really. I still like to see pagerank on a page, kinda gives me a quick visual if the page is being noticed by Google (cached).