It's all about location, location, location!In
past...back in days when Google was IT when it came to natural search results...everyone was very focused (or shall we say obsessed?) on Google page rank.
Now that Google is a public company and search business has become competitive (most notably due to serious search capabilities now being offered by Yahoo and Microsoft, via MSN), Google has become much more "private" or secretive about things like page rank, backlinks, etc.
As a matter of fact, many are of opinion that Google is now intentionally displaying outdated page rank and backlink information on Google Toolbar in an effort to mask true workings of Google and to frustrate Search Engine Optimization (SEO) community, which had become fairly skillful at "playing Google game". If this is case, then Google page rank fixation is now pure folly.
Another factor that is closely watched by webmasters is Alexa traffic rank. This traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users.
However, Alexa user base is only a sample of Internet population, and sites with relatively low traffic will not be accurately ranked by Alexa due to statistical limitations of sample.
