About Google PageRank
PageRank is a measure of connectivity. It is a rough approximation of the odds that a random web surfer will cross your page. PageRank is calculated by following links throughout the web, and placing more weight on links from pages that many quality pages link at.
The problem with PageRank is that most industries and most ideas are not exceptionally important and well integrated into the web. This means that if Google did place a heavy emphasis on PageRank, webmasters could simply buy or rent a few high PageRank links from sites in a more important vertical and dominate the search results for their niche topic. However, that is not how it works.
PageRank (mentioned in The Anatomy of a Search Engine) as it relates to SEO is overrated. By Google making the concept easy to see and understand, it allows more people to talk about them and makes it easier for more people to explain how search engines work using Google and PageRank as the vocabulary. Google's technology is not necessarily better/more effective than the technologies owned by Yahoo!, MSN, or Ask, but they reinforce their market position by being the default vocabulary. And, as they move on to more elegant and more sophisticated technologies, many people are still using irrelevant outdated marketing techniques.
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