Since its start, the great innovation of Google was “Page Rank” – a way of measuring a website’s importance by what other sites linked to it.
Over the years other factors have increased in importance – and it was never the all-encompassing factor many thought it to be – to a point where best estimates are it is now about 20% of what goes into search engine rankings.
And here’s the latest in confirmation of that, from Peter Norvig, Google’s Director of Research.
As described in Web Pro News,

Norvig said at SMX today that PageRank is still one thing that is “overhyped,” and that Google never felt that it was such a big factor. They have always looked at all available data, combining every available signal and trying to figure out the best way to combine them.

Got it?