PageRank, backlinks, and SERP position

trying to understand how this works

[acronym]

I have a PR8 site with 4,180 backlinks. A competitor site has PR7 with 3,780 backlinks.

When you search for the plural of "my" keyword, the competitor site comes up #1 in the SERP.

Q1. Why does a site with lower PR and fewer backlinks appear higher in the SERP?

Q2. Some sites I do backlinks on show hundreds of links from the site to itself. Shouldn't a site's links to itself not be included in backlinks? If they should be, how can I play too?

Q3. Why do I see wild variations in backlink counts depending on whether I use: link:domain.com or link:http://www.domain.com

Thanks,

Mike

[MHes]

Q1. Why does a site with lower PR and fewer backlinks appear higher in the SERP?

PR is just one factor... relevancy for the search includes anchor text of links in, word proximity on the page, H1 etc. etc. If PR was an overiding factor, high pr sites would dominate the results even if they were not very relevant.

Q2. Some sites I do backlinks on show hundreds of links from the site to itself. Shouldn't a site's links to itself not be included in backlinks? If they should be, how can I play too?

Any pages with pr4+ (I think) show on backlinks, but this does not mean they have an importance. Back links are determined on a page basis, not a site basis so internal pages can qualify. However, Google may dampen their influence.

Q3. Why do I see wild variations in backlink counts depending on whether I use: link:domain.com or link:http://www.domain.com

I think google will treat these as different domains.... anybody?