I guess the easiest way to do this is to break down some myths and unfortunately the leading "SEO" experts out there disagree with me, but then they have just come along in the last 3 or so years and are blinded by what the Google public relations people have been putting out.
First - PR does not equal page rank - its just a little logarithmic representation created digitally for surfers because they like cool gadgets on a scale from 1-10 - the base of the log is somewhere estimated around 6-7
This scale is applied to all PAGES on the net that Google knows about - note this is NOT SITES - and is a representation of the closeness of a page to Googles index page (the #1 page at the top rating of 10)
There are many factors that go into this display and anyone that tells you they have broken the code and have figured out how to display a real time version of this is lying - and has no idea as this is one of many closely guarded secrets
The one thing known about this little display for sure is that you can manipulate it to show whatever you want - Im not going to demonstrate how to do it - as there are enough code idiots running around that already know how and sucker people into link trades using this "feature"
Conclusion - (at least mine and some others that have dealt with this for many years) - if you base a business model or even your little hobby on a little green bar - you deserve to fail
Page Rank - Google has dealt with this issue many times in their published college papers - this is what is created from their algorithm based on hundreds of factors from major ones like "Votes" to little things like html compliance and on and on
You can take guesses for years on what is included in this algo - and believe me there are many who have been trying for their entire careers - and still not know all the factors.
Again - this is something applied at the PAGE level - not the SITE
This Page Rank is the secret stuff that determines where you "rank" in the search results - again it has nothing to do with the PR listed above
Now to confuse the issue a little - there is a third element - called algo filters - these are little things that are applied to a page based on something Google doesnt like - an example would be hidden text - if a page has some hidden text and they detect it (which they do pretty well) - then that filter is applied to that page after the ranking occurs
Some other general type filters that get used - if you have more than two pages from the same domain that would rank for a particular search - then they apply this filter to only show two pages in the top 1000 search results
A good way to see this filter in play is to either go to the end of the results and click on the "display ommitted results" link or you can just add &filter=0 to the end of your URL in the address box of the search results
To generalize here a little - you will run into many people that "think" they know how Google works based on their own experiences or repeating the claims of other "experts" - but I sure wouldnt want to run my business on heresay and unproven theories - if you do - Good Luck
