Google PageRank - innovation, albatross or just plain evil?

One issue not addressed in the recent New York Times article on Google SEO woes is whether or not PageRank is simply no longer credible or useful. Sure, when it was first introduced it provided an additional dimension to refine search results beyond keyword density, but back then sites only linked to other sites because they had meaningful or relevant information.

There was simply no other reason for linking.

PageRank provided that reason -- and single-handedly created the SEO industry (though the abundance of marketing folks that popped up during the bubble had to find something to do for a living, at least until Facebook and Twitter came along), resulting in the never ending game of one-upmanship between Google geniuses and SEO hacks.

So here's the really interesting question -- if PageRank went away, would search results become better or worse? Would diminishing the impact of the massive quantity of link and content farms allow for organic, useful content to percolate to the top like the good old days?

I think the answer is yes, particularly if the holy grail of search, the search box, were improved to help searchers write better queries.  No matter how smart search algorithms may be, the better the query, the better and fewer the results.

Another issue, beyond whether or not PageRank is still useful in improving search results, is whether or not it is actually becoming dangerous and detrimental to intellectual discourse and society as a whole. PageRank encourages the promotion of new and frequently linked content regardless of how credible the source may be (such as the non-existent link between autism and vaccines) so it will continually rank high, while older, more credible content on the same subject (but less linked to by blogs, media, etc.) gets pushed down far enough to where no one will ever bother to find it.

The result? The self-perpetuation of ignorance. That's sure evil in my book.