Page Rank question.

[PowerUp]

Hi, about 1 1/2 years ago I built a dummy website as part of my learning process with HTML. This site has less than 5 backlinks to it (according to Yahu) and 0 backlinks (according to Googel). It has a pagerank of 1.

About 2 months ago, I put another website online and started building inlinks. To date, I have about 500 backlinks (according to Yahu) and 0 backlinks (according to Googel). It has a pagerank of 0.

Why is it that the website (with only 2 pages) with fewer backlinks, and poorer content rank higher than my other website with more than 50 pages and better content? This baffles me.

[tedster]

Several factors come to mind:

1. Google does not report many backlinks in their link: operator (see Google link: operator FAQ [webmasterworld.com] in our Hot Topics area)
2. Google does not allow all links to pass PR
3. Google has recently changed something about the way links are weighted. The exact details were not disclosed, but it's pretty clear than some kinds of links just don't matter any more.
4. PageRank is only about links - it's independent of topics, content, keyword, themes, whatever. It's only a linkage thing.