I work in Internet Marketing and I would like to say please do not get hung up on your PageRank (PR). PR is only one of the many ways that Google ranks you in the search engines. Other search engines like Yahoo and MSN Live Search also use backlinks (links from other websites back to yours) as part of their search engine algorithm which is used to rank you.

Yes, it is true that your PR is calculated by the number of back links you have on your website. However, not all backlinks are created equal. For example, if your website is about cars, a backlink from another car website is considered of higher value than a website on handbags.

There are several reasons why PR drops, such as the ads are paid or sponsored links eg Text Link Ads (not to be confused with Google AdSense, Nuffnang, etc), or being affected by the "Google Slap".

The reason why Google is moving more towards other search engine algorithms such as TrustRank is because people abused the system by spamming. TrustRank is all about separating the good websites from spam websites.

I agree with lifeplayer, traffic has no relation with PR. PR started being seen as not so important (as told by Matt Cutts, the Google Quality Control guy) about 2 years ago which is why some of you may have seen a decrease.

Once again, I want to put emphasis that your Google PR is not the only method of calculating your ranking on the search engines. Right now, I would say Google PR is a really a minor issue. Things like TrustRank (which I think I mentioned before in this thread) are increasingly important.

Concentrate on having better quality content instead of how many links are going back to you. Think about it - if people like your website, they are more likely to link back to you than if your website is awful.

well if they add you to their blog roll they are backlinking to you... of course your site has to have traffic - they won't select a random blog like www.xyzksdfjad.blog.com to their blog roll... you would only link back to a blog that you enjoy reading that has quality content

i believe what lifeplayer is talking about is that PR is not increased only by the amount of traffic you have. if all links remain the same 1 year from now, the only increase in PR you may get is if the websites linking back to you also increase in their PR

everyone has google pagerank but its not that important. if you do want to check it there are numerous pagerank checkers... jsut search for it on google search.