Google's PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links toanother page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the moreimportant 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 PageRank is calculated.
PageRank is Google's way of calculating a page's importance. It is important as it is a factor that determines a page's ranking in the search results.