PR and Links do not add up??

[clarkhaddock]

I have been looking at a lot of other company sites that provide the same thing we do. I mainly look at those that have a higher page rank. We have a PR of 3 so I look at a lot of sites that have 4 or 5 and there are a few with a 6. When looking I do a link check to see where they are listed out there and on what site, how many and the PR for each linked site. Now, we have anywhere from 10-100 links out there. None have huge a PR. But what i do not understand is why the other companies out there may have fewer links but much larger PR. From what I have read there is a big difference between a PR 3, 4, and 5. The gap is bigger as you go up. How are these sites getting such a big PR with so few links?

[phpmaven]

For one thing, if you are looking at the backlinks in Google, you will only see a small percentage of them. Looking at MSN or Yahoo! will give you a better idea of how many links they have, although some of them may not exist in Google.

The other thing is that even one really high PR link could make a huge difference. If they had a PR7 or PR8 link from a page with few links on it, that could crank their PR above yours even if you have many more links.

I wouldn't worry too much about PR though. It's just one of many factors involved in ranking sites.