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So there was just a PageRank update, and everyone is excited as usual; but perhaps a bit less this time.  I know PageRank is "dead" as a metric of site importance and ranking.  I don't deny this at all.  I'm glad most people shook the PageRank obsession.  Barry agrees with me in this post.  I remember when PageRank was hyped to the point that people were spoofing PageRank using redirects to artificially inflate the value of domains.  SEO Black Hat documented this here.  He says:

"This further illustrates how useless Page Rank has become in measuring a site's importance."

Ok, so PageRank is dead as a metric for "site importance;" but what about trust?  It's useful for that (as long as it's not spoofed!).

I see PageRank as similar to HackerSafe and TRUSTe logos.  Like PageRank, most of these services are absolutely meaningless beyond the trust building effect they have.

So give PageRank some credit; it's also a lot cheaper than paying for the above.  It also tends to come naturally as you build links in any case.  Oh, and HackerSafe only has a PR of 4, by the way