I recently reported how drops in page rank didn't have an adverse affect on my search engine rankings. Here's a speculative article that discusses the declining importance of page rank.
Be careful about the obscure advice:
"If you really want online success in Google, think about customers and how to attract them, develop for them, cater to them, and find others who share that methodology (in plain english: more 'unique' content and different approaches to display that content and linkage that extends that content 'both ways') and Google will reward you. Shortcutting this -- Google consistently won't."
This basically says that unique content and linkage is good. I think everyone knows that, but we also know that unique content is not enough. One good thing about a ton of unique indexed content is that it gets you more anchor text. See cheap content.
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