Is PR solely based on number of backlinks?

I have read somewhere that Google PR is solely based on the number of backlinks that your website has.

Is that true??

Not only on backlinks..

They also look at :
The relevency of your web site,
Your keywords and title,
Your domain name can help for SEO,
and much more.

Google PR is not entirely based on the number of backlinks. Other factors like quality and relevancy of those links, page content, domain age etc. also do count in the calculation of Google PR.

Originally Posted by etechdesigns Google PR is not entirely based on the number of backlinks. Other factors like quality and relevancy of those links, page content, domain age etc. also do count in the calculation of Google PR.

I'm not exactly sure whether thats true or not ( Only google engineers will know for sure). However I believe PR is based purely on backlinks and the PR of the backlinks - i.e you could get a PR 4 site from a single link from a PR 5 webpage.

However (and this is a big however), PR has little to do with your position in the search engines - eg my a PR 4 website, which gained its PR 4 from a single link off a PR 5 webpage is very unlikely to do well in the search engines and is likely to come a lot lower than a site that got its PR 4 from hundreds of PR 0, Pr 1, Pr 2, Pr 3 links.

The reason that most sites ranking higher if they have a higher PR is that they have gained that PR from hundreds of good quality links, rather than a couple of high PR links.

So really PR is a bit of a red herring when coming to ranking - which is what it is all about anyway. Its far better to get links from well trafficed websites which in turn have gained their PR naturally.

So do you mean to say that the relevancy of the links and page content do not count in the calculation of PR?

I think that Backlinks do help, but my website had a PR of 3 7 days in from its purchase, and I didnt work on it for months.

But what really sucks about PR's is that they dont affect what position you come in when they search for your website. I tried searching for my website (http://www.xboxgrid.com) on google, so I typed in Xbox Grid, and it came up some 70 odd pages in. But on MSN and Alexa, it came up as #1 (or at least my forums did).. So PR doesnt nessisarily affect your whole site.

But to answer your question, no PR isnt only affected by Backlinking.

Originally Posted by etechdesigns So do you mean to say that the relevancy of the links and page content do not count in the calculation of PR?

You have to understand PR is just a part of googles alogrithm for search engine ranking. I would not categorically say PR is not just related to backlinks (as swifty said) as I believe it may well be just to do with backlinks - I have not seen any information on the web that says it has another other factor influencing it other than backlinks anyway - Here is a link that expalins PR in more detail and how it is calculated: http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html

I would stop worrying about your PR to be honest - it is really just something that inexperienced webamsters concentrate on - the pro's just concentrate on their search engine positions - and that means high quality content with highly relevant backlinks from quality sites - get this right and you will not go wrong.

I can tell you that it is not just based on backlinks because I have a site that has 0 backlinks and was able to get a PR4 rating for it in less than 6 months. The site is darnriver.com, I'm currently selling it as I don't have the time to work on it anymore but you can run all the checks you want and see it's a PR4 with 0 backlinks. The only think i can think of how it got that is from the autoping part of the blog. Other than that, never promoted it at all and never linked to if from any of my other sites.

Originally Posted by miller2348 I can tell you that it is not just based on backlinks because I have a site that has 0 backlinks and was able to get a PR4 rating for it in less than 6 months. The site is darnriver.com, I'm currently selling it as I don't have the time to work on it anymore but you can run all the checks you want and see it's a PR4 with 0 backlinks. The only think i can think of how it got that is from the autoping part of the blog. Other than that, never promoted it at all and never linked to if from any of my other sites.

Was the page rank given in the last PR update or did you have it before then? (April I think).

Because a lot of people are saying that the last update (only on sites that had a PR0) was a screw up. How can a site with no back links get a PR of 3? Its not even found in the Google search engine so how can they apply a relevant page rank to it?

Well, I have had a lot of "experts" who believe that PR is ONLY based on backlinks and the relevancy of those backlinks.
Having a link of a website with a high PR will help your site get a higher PR.