tedster - 3:31 pm on Nov 1, 2009 (gmt 0)

To be precise, PR does influence the SERPs - it's just not the only influence. Many people make no distinction between a page's ranking and its Page Rank, using the two words as if they meant the same thing.

PR is one of the "query-independent" factors. That means it doesn't include anything about keywords in its calculation. It's more like a measure of raw "page strength" compared to all the other pages on the web, rather than compared to just pages about the same topic.