The role PageRank plays is sometimes big, sometimes small.
There are as many opinions on the importance of PageRank as there are people with an opinion of it. To add to the confusion, PageRank isn't a discrete factor of where in search results a web page will appear. It works in conjunction with many other factors.
So let's do an experiment.
I searched for the phrase "SEO services" in Google and looked only at the PageRank of each page that appeared in the result of all 10 web pages on each of the first ten pages of search results. I charted the average PageRank value across all ten from each page. PageRanks were pretty high - there were almost no low PageRanks values in the sample, suggesting that low PageRanks (zero to 2) just don't make it to the top of search results unless they have a very high MatchScore. As you can see from the chart, there was no meaningful drop in average PageRank across the first ten pages (100 search results).
fyi - I added 0.5 to each PageRank because displayed PageRanks are rounded down to the nearest integer. A PageRank of 4, for example, is actually 4-point-something. Adding that 0.5 to each PageRank, on average, brings us closer to the actual value.
Clearly there are lots capable companies in SEO who use their own expertise (Search Engine Optimization) to get their service offering to the top of search results, so it's an extreme case of search results competition you could say.
Not seeing a drop off in PageRank values in the first ten pages, I then took another sample; this time, every tenth page of search results, beginning with page1, then page 11, page 21, etc, up to page 91. I charted all one hundred search results' PageRanks and a pattern did begin to emerge.
In a competitive space, like SEO clearly is, search results positions are bitterly fought over, by companies who are experts in the space.
In a less competitive space, like online knitting supplies, it is relatively easy to get higher up in search results because knitting supply companies rarely have expertise in Search Engine Optimization.
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