I am quite puzzled with page ranks. Lately I saw a website which has a PR3 but it has hardly any backlinks (only 3)..how can a website get to a PR3 with so less backlinks? does a PR depend on the traffic of the site or anything more?
Page rank can be a tricky thing. It hinges on the quality of links not just the number. The age of the domain comes into play. It also leans heavily on the quality of the site's content. Good ranks better than trash. Don't get to hung up on page rank, it is only one facet of a webpage. My pages with the highest rank are almost always outperformed by lesser pages. It means a heck of a lot less than most people think.
It's not just backlinks that count towards PR. It's quality of content, pages, quality of backlinks, number of backlinkes, etc.
Pagerank relies on backlinks and backlinks only. Not content. Not traffic. However, not all backlinks are equal. A few backlinks from sites which themselves have high pagerank count for more than lots from sites with none. Also as infobookstore says, don't think you know how many backlinks a site has simply by doing a links search on google.