I disagree that
PR is link popularity, and I understand that there are multiple schools of thought on this subject. It is not difficult to obtain a high
PR. You can get a high
PR from a single high
PR backlink. You can also have a low
PR with a large number of links from low
PR sites. A high
PR link will not necessarily rocket a site to the top. From my experience, the more quality links that you have, the better the boost that you get.
I define a quality link as a link from an industry-related site WITH your keywords in the link, so I think we are in complete agreement on that.
Didn't see the GoogleGuy announcement. A random sampling probably makes more sense than the old method of only displaying higher
PR links.