Why no pagerank after 8 months?

I keep getting "we have no data for this site" in the google webmaster tools for my site. I'm not sure what's wrong here, as my site is averaging #9 in google and is on the first page of ther SERP for its primary keyword. All the pagerank checking tools show the site as zero pr.

I have about 158 backlinks, one from a link exchange with a site exactly matching my niche. So could this reciprocal link be disadvantage for pagerank but working out ok for the SERP? There is very little competition in this area, and so when I and the other site owner exchanged links, we both shot from the later pages of the SERP, 4-8 to the first page. I know reciprocal links are supposedly bad these days but my naive SEO experience seems to suggest this link exchange helped.

But my main question is regarding the pagerank. So do you have any ideas what might be going on? I know this is a murky world, but any shared experiences/advice is welcome.

It could take a while. Just depends on when Google updates it. It took my blog around 7 months or so to get a PageRank of 4. Your Page Rank is suppose to be based primarily on the number of backlinks although it's speculated to be based on other things too. The backlinks is the biggest. Quality of backlinks is a bigger factor than quantity of backlinks too.

You may not have enough yet with 158 or you may have enough but just need to wait till the next update.

EDIT: I should add that Google is always updating Page Rank. You just don't see it publicly until they decide to release it (which is usually every few months or so.)

My be in the next PR update, Google will allot some PR to your site. SERPs have nothing to do with Page Rank. Just concentrate on link building, you will surely get a good PR.

Thanks for your input guys I appreciate it.

I have had my site around for over a year with still no pr so don't feel so bad

Your situation is very odd, you should post your site so we can look at it in more detail and see for ourselves what is going on.

My forum ranked 3/10 in 1st 3 months but hasn't budged from there since, been lil over a yr I think. But I havent had time to SEO and stuff in over 5 months. I only traded links with similar sites.(unless it was a friend or an advertisement).

Chris, were you speaking to me or to jason who posted above you?

You can see my site here(re-directs to main site as I don't want the main domain showing up here in SERPS), but I've figured that perhaps this reciprocal link I have with another site has stalled any PR. You see, I link to him on everypage of the static part of the site (non-forum) and he does the same on his blog. The forum seems to have a PR of 1 in the FF toolbar, even though I understand that's a worst-guess feature not an accurate representation. I've also started using no-follow on many of the external links on the site.

As I said originally, the good placement of the site in google is mainly because there's very little interest or competition in this area, in fact the adsense earnings on this site are a big fat zero. Well, just less than 10 bucks in all time they've been on there which is just about the same age as the site.

Thanks
V

PR is mostly increased according to the number of links having PR and pointing to the websites. So hundreds of PR zero might not help but even one single PR6 link, especially on uncrowded web pages can be great.

Continue adding links and don not stress too much over PR.

Quality links.... Gather more quality links not only after the counts of links...

Link building to increase link Popularity and I am sure!You will get a good PR!

Not all the time adding to the number of incoming links can help with PR boost but the quality of them is important. For example, one single PR6 link will have a great impact on boosting a website's PR value in the next Google PR update but tens of PR zero links might not help.