I wanted to try and give a more in depth answer to the question so here goes;
1. All links inbound to your website count as votes in Google’s Pagerank system.
2. Google only shows Back links that at the time Pagerank was last calculated
"had a Pagerank of three or more on the page of the site that the link came from or if the page that the link came from was less than three, pages linking to that page had a pagerank of three or more".
So it is possible to rank higher in Google whilst apparently not having any back links. Try it! Go to Google.com and type
Google back links. The top return has 3 backward links, the next two answers have none and the 4th answer has 40 backward links.
I wouldn’t be so bold as to base this theory on such a small test. So I did the same test thousands of times and Ialways get a similar answer.
What’s happening here is that the sum of the pages that have fractional Pagerank have outscored the pages that have a higher Pagerank? Whilst it appears to be unfair it isn’t, and it proves that a link counts no matter where it’s from.
Pagerank isn’t 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. It’s every number in between so if you have a Pagerank of say 1.9999 your page rank will be 1.
I have heard people say you’re banned in Google or you have no Pagerank. Nonsense, you just have a Pagerank of less than 1.
It is possible to generate a Pagerank of 5 with your own websites internal linking structure.
Google periodically updates Pagerank, so if you’re thinking when will I see back links in Google the answer is the next time Google updates its data. Generally it seems to be about every 4 months but
don’t bank on it. and remember just because you can't see them it doesn't mean their not there.
To find out how many links you have do
(link:www.yourdomainname) in yahoo and or MSN and you'll get a feel for the real number Google will never show you the same number as they don't show all the links.