Googles Page rank
Page Rank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page's importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page's Page Rank is calculated.
Page Rank is Google's way of deciding a page's importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determine a page's ranking in the search results. It isn't the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.
What is Google's Base?
In order for Google Base to succeed, it will need the support of both publishers and users. Quite frankly, most are having difficulty seeing the value in Google Base. Google Base is a new service in beta, from Google that requests that publishers add their information to the "Google Base". Google Base is hosted by Google. All types of item submissions are accepted online and off-line information in a variety of formats. Google Base uses tagging similar to that found in many social-bookmaking applications, though Google refers to it as labels. The labels are used by Google to categorize or add attributes to the information that better describes the content. The more popular specific attributes become, the more often Google will suggest them when others post the same or similar items. Additionally, items that become more popular will show up as suggested item types in the "Choose an Existing Item Type" drop down menu.
Google Base is currently available only in English. Web surfers can experiment with Google Base and browse through existing items at any time. However, to submit items, a Google Account must be created. Google Base will currently accept bulk uploads in CSV, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom 0.3 formats.
One nice feature of Google Base has is a geo-targeting search feature that produces results for a very specific region. However at this time many submission do not include a product location so the geo-targeting feature, while a nice addition, will need some refinement as well.
Google Base currently produces far less relevant searches than a vertical search engine. Why Google is relying on tagging (labels) rather than the contextual spidering makes little sense. And why Google has taken the step of content hosting is unclear. Search Engines historically devalue duplicate content, the Google hosting may provide a unique twist to the duplicate content debates.
