The thing not to confuse is "TrustRank"... the white paper and "TrustRank" the term.
Google will use the term, last I checked they received another extension on their intent to use patent for the term.
The problen I have is when "TrustRank"... the white paper... get's intermingled with Google and how
they're going to use or apply it.
Despite the "goofyness" Google tends to exhibit every once in a while, I've really not seen anything that would lead me to believe that a hard core change in what they value, as far is ranking is concerned. Yes, I'm familiar with the answers.com press release stating that their short term loss of 28% of their traffic was due directly to an algo shift. Bah. Changes, tweaks, tweaks, tightening, loosening, not to mention a competitor simply outperforming you happens all the time.
Most of the time, I simply smile when I read about how badly "devalued" reciprocal links have become. Another bah. What I have seen is lousy, spammy, uncategorized link pages get deindexed or shoved into the SI. What I have seen is sites that relied heavily on reciprocal links find some/many of their pages relegated to the SI. What I have NOT seen is sites that utilize solid, relevant reciprocal linking practices as PART of their linking campaign lose good rankings or
PR. Some sites are simply not going to attract "natural" links and Google knows it.
PR is what it is. A measure of how important people like me and you think a website is. How many random surfers link to to you? There's a whole lot more of them than there are of us. Relevance on the other hand, is in the eye of the beholder. Trust is in the eye of the beholder. Think along the lines of what a random surfer is likely to "trust" or what "opinions" they're most likely to consider and it's a good chance you'll find what the algorithyms like.
Dave