Sic transit gloria bloggy

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I needed some lorem ipsum filler text for a page layout at work the other day. I knew there were lorem ipsum generators on the web, so I Googled for the phrase "lorem ipsum"—and discovered that this very journal appeared at spot #5 on the results list.

I was kinda startled because, to tell the truth, I tend to think of this as "my journal" rather than as "Lorem Ipsum." In general, I don't tend to think of journals by their titles, but rather by their authors' names. I'm always a little surprised when someone links to me using the link text "Lorem Ipsum"—not displeased, mind you, just surprised.

Anyway, I admit to having been inordinately pleased to make the first page of results on Google, but alas, pride goeth before a fall in PageRank; today this journal is only 16th.

And no, this is not a request to link to me. (And no, this paragraph is not a sly roundabout wink-wink way to subtly hint (without seeming to do so) that you should link to me.) The real point of this entry is the same as what I was saying a few days ago about that Orlowski article: PageRank changes frequently, and Google results shift around all the time.

(I almost titled this entry "Sic transit gloria Google," but I was afraid people might misread that as insulting. Given my earlier entries on the subject, I should probably reiterate, just to be completely clear, that I have a great deal of respect for Google, and I find it an extraordinarily valuable resource. Any of you who are new to the web in the past couple years, try to imagine what the web was like before search engines. I don't know how we managed.)

7 Responses to “Sic transit gloria bloggy”

  1. Tempest

    Do you have the Google bar on your web browser by any chance? One of the things you can display is something called Page Rank, and it tells you the importance of the page you’re viewing according to Google. I think it has something to do with number of links, btu I forget. Unlike page ranking on searches, the rank stays pretty consistent over time. Tho if your page becomes more important, you’ll get a higher rank.

    On a scale of 0 – 10 your main journal page ranks at 5, which is pretty damn awesome seeing that SH ranks at 6. Your individual entries sometimes come up 0 or 1. My regular journal is at 4 now, and the OWW main page is 5. Just to give you some data points 🙂

    Leah Bobet put it best when she stated that the PageRank thing is a measure of Wuffie. 😉

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  2. Jed

    Sadly, Google Toolbar is available only for IE for Windows; I use Safari on a Mac.

    Thanks for letting me know my journal’s PageRank! It never occurred to me to check. I guessed at first that the relatively high PageRank is largely due to the times that boingboing has posted items I’ve provided, and their thank-you link has linked back to my page, but now I remember that I usually give them the link to my home page rather than directly to my journal.

    …I’ve just installed Google Toolbar on my Windows machine at work (Remote Desktop Connection is way cool), and have discovered that boingboing’s PageRank isn’t as high as I’d assumed; it’s “only” a 7. But then, Slashdot and the New York Times are “only” 8s. Yahoo is a 9; Google is a 10.

    PageRank is indeed a measure of Whuffie; I assume that Cory based the idea of Whuffie on PageRank. (He’s a big Google fan.)

    PageRank is not just an indication of number of places linking to you, btw; it’s the product of a complex and secret algorithm, but the general idea seems to be that the more high-PageRanking pages link to you, the higher your own PageRank is. So boingboing has fairly high PageRank because lots of high-ranking other sources (such as A-list bloggers) link to it, and boingboing’s fairly high PageRank results in places it links to also getting increased PageRank.

    Some people use the Google Toolbar to reverse-engineer PageRank and try to figure out Google’s algorithm. Google has been known to respond by changing its algorithm to prevent whatever hack was being used.

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  3. Jed

    One more thing: it kinda looks like the F&SF home page is the only major sf-related page that has higher than a 6 PageRank (it has a 7). Interesting.

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  4. Vardibidian

    Question: can you, by posting to various blogs which allow you to comment, up your GoogleWhuffie? I ask because my own Tohu Bohu has jumped from a 1 to a 3 today, and I suspect it’s because I posted on four different blogs. Now, as those posts get shoved down the page, my GoogleWhuffie should decrease, but I can always simply return to those self-same websites, hanging around and causing trouble and becoming ever-so-slightly more googlewhuffielicious. I doubt I could get a 5, like you, but couldn’t I keep it at a 3?

    Redintegro Iraq,
    -V.

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  5. Jed

    Sounds plausible to me, but I don’t work for Google (and presumably those who do, like Kenny, can’t tell us).

    Note that posts getting shoved down a page probably won’t affect your PageRank, but getting shoved off a page might. In particular, links from the main page of a high-PageRank blog improve the PageRank of the linked-to places, but once the linking item moves off into the blog archives, the PageRank of the linked-to places goes down. At least, that’s how it’s been explained to me.

    Also note that Google can’t measure whether anyone actually follows a given link. It does (I think) measure how many links there are to your page, where they’re from, and what the link text says (though I don’t know if that last figures into PageRank or just into the ranking of search results). (Hey, cool—out of 6700+ listings at Google for “Tohu Bohu”, yours is listed eighth!)

    Anyway, I’m guessing you’re more likely to get an increased PageRank (remember, Jed is talking through his hat here) from someone in a high-profile blog linking to you than from a link in a discussion forum, just ’cause (I assume) the high-profile blog has a higher PageRank to start with than the discussion forum. But I bet if you became a regular in the discussions at, say, MetaFilter or boingboing, your PageRank would increase (as long as you kept providing links back to your page, of course).

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  6. Jed

    More on PageRank, in case anyone cares:

    The original presentation on PageRank (presumably the precise algorithm has changed significantly since then, but I assume the general idea is still the same).

    A third-party paper attempting to explain PageRank.

    Another third-party paper attempting to explain PageRank.

    Note that the second and third pages above were written by people who were attempting to reverse-engineer Google’s algorithms, presumably as part of an attempt to maximize their own pages’ PageRanks. This kind of “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) is apparently a pretty big business for some people, though Google presents a constantly moving target.

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  7. Andy

    well if you want to have those filer texts, just check [URL removed by Jed] , it;s still a good thing you know to be 5th placer in the ranks…

    [This comment was obviously spam, but it was kind of amusingly meta in various ways, so I’ve removed the URLs and am leaving the comment in place.]

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