page rank

[pagetta]

I am really sorry I know so many people ask this, but having read through the forums for a few months now I am still confused as to how pagerank is decided and exactly what bearing it has on your site's perforemance.

Is it based on IBLs, or is it more general to the quality of a site - content/construction etc.

If you have a good page rank, does it affect your ranking on google? all the posts I have read often contradict one another! How do you get a PR5 and when you have it what will happen?

Also, one of our sites (orbis) has a PR3, as do most of the external pages, except for 'customers' which has a PR4 - I was under the impression internal page ranks should be lower than the home page? Or could this just be part of the ups and downs experienced before a mass PR update?

Sorry to ask such a newbie question, but with so much inofrmation to read it can all get a bit confusing!

[cbp]

PageRank (PR) is purely a mathematical function of the incomig links to a site.
The ranking of a page is based on 100's of factors, of which PR is one of them.

CBP