The Fire Ant Gazette - A Midland, Texas Blog

#21,129...with a bullet
Category: Navel Gazing...
Posted Thursday, December 02, 2004 at 11:27 PM [GMT-6]

PubSub's LinkRanks is yet another approach to attempting to quantify the relative popularity of websites. It's similar to Google's PageRank, but doesn't appear to delve as deeply into the full hierarchy of incoming links. According to the PubSub site, LinkRanks are computed "with more weight given to fresher links and to links from a wider variety of pages." If you're really ~~bored~~ interested, you can read the details of LinkRanks computations here, complete with equations.

Anyhow, I just did a search on my domain and got the strangest results, shown below in a partial screenshot:

I don't have the faintest idea what could have caused a jump of 40,000 places since yesterday. I suspect that whatever the cause, I'll have a bit of trouble maintaining that momentum. The pressure's almost unbearable.

[Tip o'the Hat to Read/Write Web for clueing me in to LinkRanks in the first place.]

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Comments

"I don't have the faintest idea what could have caused a jump of 40,000 places since yesterday."

I do. Some reader in the Dog Fancy message boards must have spotted the pictures of Abbye.

It's gotta be that. Cute dog-like creatures are always a huge draw.

Posted by: Mr. Freen at December 3, 2004 01:20 AM

That didn't occur to me, but it's a better explanation than anything else I can come up with!

Posted by: Eric at December 3, 2004 08:35 AM

Eric, thanks for the link. Just out of curiosity, I checked out the site of my former employment.

Yesterday, it was 68,679
Today, it's 74,946

I'm sure the trend will continue, and is due entirely to my departure! :-)

Posted by: Jeff at December 3, 2004 09:16 AM

Yeah, it's hard to get good help nowadays!

Posted by: Eric at December 3, 2004 09:44 AM

I seem to be stuck in the 48,000 range.

Posted by: CGHill at December 3, 2004 10:03 AM

You know, with 100 million websites (or whatever inconceivable number it's up to now), 20,000th or 40,000th or 60,000th is really quite remarkable.

I have no idea how many sites are in this ranking list. I just did a search on my church's site and it comes in around 140,000.

I also did searches on some small local non-profit domains and they don't show up at all, so I'm guessing there's a cap on the number of sites that are being ranked.

Posted by: Eric at December 3, 2004 10:10 AM

Eric

Your website is actually more popular than you think, especially that Nov. 9, 2004 article "Don Evans and John Ashcroft Resign" which in your archive is #001319.

Google "patent copyright evans bush" yields Fireant Gazette #2 among 14,700 results!!!

"patent copyright evans" yields Fireant Gazette #4 among 18,000 results.

"patent copyright bush" yields Fireant Gazette #82 among 74,700 results.

Posted by: The Eurasian at December 5, 2004 12:51 AM

Eurasian, a high Google ranking on a specific search term doesn't necessarily correlate with a site's "popularity" (whatever that means), especially if that search term is irrelevant to the site's primary theme.

What your research does show, however, is how a blog can be co-opted by a contributor for uses other than what the blog owner intended. You consistently use my blog as a soapbox for your "patent and copyright" agenda, by posting off-topic or only peripherally-related comments (like the one I'm responding to).

You're fortunate that I'm a relatively benign dictator who is willing to allow a bit of leeway for those who make enough relevant contributions to permit a reasonable amount of blogasitic behavior.

OTOH, a reader is a reader and it's not like I have so many of them that I can afford to kick any of them out. ;-)

Posted by: Eric at December 5, 2004 09:08 AM

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