Yes, all other factors being equal, I will bet on the higher PR page to outrank the lower PR page. And yes, Google has said that PR is only one of about 200 ranking factors. But notice: 1) They are acknowledging that PR is a ranking factor. 2) They never said that PR is only 1/200 of the ranking algorithm. My sense of it is that PR carries a lot more ranking weight than one half of one percent. How much? Only Google knows.
But to get better placement in search results, you need authoritative sites linking to you, and therefore pagerank at least in terms of incoming backlinks matters
True, and here's some food for thought. Does anyone seriously think that, every time a search is done, Google instantly recalculates all the backlinks to determine who gets into the SERPs. Of course not. That would impose an overwhelming load on their computers. But at any given moment, PageRank is a pretty good indicator to Google of the quality and quantity of backlinks to a page. I'd bet my money on the likelihood that, in ranking any keyword search, they simply look at the PR of pages to get a sense of their backlinks — along with the other factors in their search algorithm.
"Somewhat related". I can get 8 PR9 backlinks with the anchor text "Nobody Searches for This" and get a really high PR site with little traffic.
A good PR does not mean that you will get search engines traffic. High search engine rankings are the medium for traffic. So, if you are looking for traffic through search engines, increase back links of your site to get high rankings
My personal experience is that Pr is one of the Factor which google considers. Its a trust rank assigned to that particular page. Although it may be low but its surely a factor for serps. I do not agree that Pr does not plays any role in serps.It does play but the secret is How much.
Hello friend, There is no relation between PR and traffic because sometimes it may be your site PR is low but search engine traffic would be high.
Pr has nothing to do with serps if it did then basically all the pr7+ sites would dominate and all sites with no rank would be nowhere. this is not the case
Ponder this: why does Google even calculate PR? How does Google use PR? They obviously have their reasons, perhaps several reasons. And they have explicitly said that factoring PR into the rankings is one of those reasons — http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html (read the first bullet point).