The PageRank of the Web3.0 will be the GeoRank
June 3rd, 2008 by xavier
The PageRank is the current metric used by Google to rank websites.
The higher the page rank of your website, the more chance you have to appear on the first results of a search on Google.
The page rank is an absolute value. For all viewers, wherever they are, whatever language they speak, your PageRank is the same.
The web3.0 will radically change the rules. As all content will be geotagged, content will have to be classified using a new metric: the GeoRank. GeoRank will not be an absolute value. It will always be related to the observer*.
Indeed, content that first matters to you, is content related to things which are close to you.
For example, if you search for “reviews”, you will expect to first have reviews of restaurants close to you.
* Interesting statement. This sounds more and more like quantum physics where everything is related to the observer.
Empowering local agents
Till now, your local bookshop had a hard time with Amazon-like websites. As all these books were globally available, global monsters like Amazon logically succeeded in that business. They can offer better prices and yet deliver at your home in a respectable time.
But if things are GeoRanked, when you will search for the latest Harry Potter book, you will first see places near to you when you can get your copy.
Why would you prefer that than ordering your copy via a global agent?
- Speed
Search for the last Harry Potter book. First result: corner bookshop - 1 mile away. Even by feet you will get your copy faster than with an express delivery with Amazon. - Price
With the gas topping at $200/barril, it will become harder for companies like Amazon to ship on a one-to-many basis at a good economical price tag. It is just not an optimized way of distributing things. - Environment
Why would you ship a book from USA if there is copy available in your neighborhood? The environmental footprint is completely different. - Meet people
After all, we are social animals isn’t it?
PageRank will not disappear though, and Google will remain.
Every change of paradigm never totally burried the previous technology.
TV did not replace the radio, Microsoft did not replace IBM, Google did not replace Microsoft and the next Google will not burry Google neither. But it will take its place on the spot lights…
PageRank will still need to be used for all global content.
If you look for information about global topics, you’d better use Google.
As far as I’m concerned, you’re preaching to the choir…
This all very much looks to me like the premises of my vision for Nearyoo…
We as human beings have not become virtual, and the “Real World” is always geographically close to you, wherever you happen to be. So for the (many) things that are better handled in the real world than in the virtual (finding an appartment, a restaurant, a girlfriend, or having a beer with a friend), you indeed need to be assisted by some local-oriented tool.
@roald
Nearyoo is indeed a good app within that new scheme.
Here I wanted to describe the general new structure that the next google will have to develop. That should go beyond the level of a single application (like nearyoo). So it will have to generalize and abstract the concept of GeoRank to any object.
There is a need for a dynamic file system for the Internet which would be made of tags (ie. i-nodes) and of GeoTags to adapt the view based on the observer’s location.
Maybe it’s time to create a new micro format to specify a geotag to any object?
June 3rd, 2008? And I thought I was bad at updating
. Did you mange to find the place on Friday? The friend, that was supposed to be meeting me, ended up in a pub that served Truman Brewery beer, instead of the Brewery and wondered why she couldn’t find me 
.
Thank you for this thought provoking post. There are others out there who think that Web 3.0 will be the Semantic Web. I’m actually speaking this week at the Web 3.0 Conference & Forum in Silicon Valley. If Semantic Web is to become a reality, then it goes much deeper than georankings. Nevertheless - thanks for posting an interesting read.
friend has given the link has not regretted that has come
Hopefully the re-birth of local business and the “mom and pop” shop.