Google Blogoscoped

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Updated PageRank 10 List

The PageRank 10 list has been updated. [Thanks Chantal.]

Here is the current backlinks top 10:

PR 10 Sites
#SiteBacklinksMore/ less than before?
1Google2.200.000More
2MSN720.000Less
3Adobe Reader - Download534.000More
4Yahoo!509.000More
5W3C CSS Validation Service308.000Less
6StatCounter218.000Less
7Blogger140.000Less
8Microsoft Corporation118.000Less
9World Wide Web Consortium111.000Less
10U.S. Government’s Official Web Portal107.000More

Note: This week many people report heavy shuffles of the Google results, updated backlinks, missing backlinks (not a single backlink is shown for this blog at the moment), updated images in image search, and new PageRank values which partly only show in the Google Directory (search for your own site at directory.google.com, click on the directory link, and scroll down to your PageRank icon).

Doom 3 Searches

Yahoo! Buzz Weekly reveals the top searches for the new video game Doom 3:

Google IPO Announcement

Google’s IPO site just released the announcement that bidder registration will close on August 12 (and the auction will commence soon thereafter).

UK Government Enters Search Engine Marketing

“The UK Government has launched its first ever search engine marketing campaign in a bid to drive traffic to its new Directgov* citizen portal.” [Thanks Ian.]

* The site’s layout, though heavily CSS-based and lacking any tables, is somewhat Firefox-incompatible (the navigation and logo is hidden).

Googler Blogs

Adam Bosworth is working at Google, and he also blogs. In his latest post he makes a good point for creating easy interfaces. (He also makes a point against SOAP, the Web Services standard which is often an overhead to what is done with it – like, querying the Google API for a simple search result.) [Via Anil Dash.]

German Cities

Here are the top 50 German cities according to how many pages their official homepages have. (The pagecount is queried via the Google Web API and represents a relative measurement – the absolute value per site as of the newest Google index is higher.)

#CityTop SiteSite Pagecount
1Aachenwww.aachen.de48,200
2Berlinwww.berlin.de36,300
3Stuttgartwww.stuttgart.de29,900
4Bremenwww.bremen.de22,500
5Brandenburgwww.brandenburg.de13,300
6Karlsruhewww.karlsruhe.de13,300
7Hamburgwww.hamburg.de10,700
8Freiburgwww.freiburg.de9,890
9Dresdenwww.dresden.de9,820
10Potsdamwww.potsdam.de8,720
11Braunschweigwww.braunschweig.de8,260
12Bonnwww.bonn.de7,790
13Augsburgwww.augsburg.edu7,710
14Regensburgwww.regensburg.de7,150
15Hannoverwww.hannover.de6,470
16Essenwww.essen.de5,750
17Bielefeldwww.bielefeld.de5,690
18Reutlingenwww.reutlingen.de5,550
19Frankfurtwww.frankfurt.de5,430
20Heidelbergwww.heidelberg.de4,790
21Wuppertalwww.wuppertal.de4,630
22Speyerwww.speyer.de4,390
23Warendorfwww.warendorf.de4,080
24Rostockwww.rostock.de3,990
25Saarlouiswww.saarlouis.de3,980
26Aalenwww.aalen.de3,960
27Kaiserslauternwww.kaiserslautern.de3,960
28Ingolstadtwww.ingolstadt.de3,950
29Oldenburgwww.oldenburg.de3,680
30Leverkusenwww.leverkusen.de3,520
31Hallewww.halle.de3,430
32Zwickauwww.zwickau.de3,270
33Neuwiedwww.neuwied.de3,010
34Oberstdorfwww.oberstdorf.de3,000
35Duisburgwww.duisburg.de2,940
36Einbeckwww.einbeck-online.de2,940
37Klevewww.kleve.de2,820
38Offenbachwww.offenbach.de2,760
39Jenawww.jena.de2,650
40Neusswww.neuss.de2,640
41Delmenhorstwww.delmenhorst.de2,530
42Kielwww.kiel.de2,520
43Iserlohnwww.iserlohn.de2,490
44Ahlenwww.ahlen.de2,420
45Viernheimwww.viernheim.de2,370
46Pforzheimwww.pforzheim.de2,280
47Hernewww.herne.de2,270
48Ellwangenwww.ellwangen.de2,210
49Euskirchenwww.euskirchen.de2,160
50Krefeldwww.krefeld.de2,160

PS: The Google Zeitgeist for June 2004 lists these top searches for German cities:

  1. Berlin
  2. Hamburg
  3. München
  4. Köln
  5. Dresden

Fictionary of Witty Words

“Agooglemus” is one of many words contained within the Fictionary, a community dictionary of fictional words. It is defined as “a gargantuan mess made by a large group of people” and has apparently nothing to do with Google.

Blogspot Ad

This Blogspot banner caught my interest. The ad reads: “Banner Ads Suck - And yet, you’re reading this, aren’t you? - Advertise on Blog*Spot for as Little as $50.”
Nevermind how effective this Google-powered ad may be, it leads to a dead page.

Update: Evan Williams (the co-founder of Pyra Labs who’s now at Google) writes:

“That ad is a blast from the past. It was from a couple years (or more) ago, when we were selling banners on blog*spot ourselves.

I’m guessin you saw it on a dormant blog*spot page that hasn’t been republished (or one in which the ad HTML got copied to the template).”

Mouse Robot

The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Building Robots tells you how to turn a mere computer mouse into Mousey the Junkbot.

Google Sparetime

Regarding the recent Yahoo/ Google patent lawsuit, The Register’s official court jester and Google-basher Andrew Orlowski writes these funny lines today:

“Perhaps it’s time to get those PhDs productively employed. Google often boasts about the number of PhD paid to perform walk-on roles in “the Googleplex”, and the famed corporate culture allows these clever people to devote 20 per cent of their work time to research projects of their own choosing. However, only a few of them do anything really productive, the rest bunking off to enjoy recreational drugs or read stories to their children, as any normal person would. Others have remained at their desks, constructing ships in bottles, designs for tethered space stations, and emergent ant farms. Which isn’t a lot of use to Google’s bottom line. With 70 per cent of Google’s income now based on technology licensed from its biggest rival, the company does need a long term story, one with “upside” as they say, to tell investors. Does it not? As a public company, the days of pretending to be a search engine are over.”

Slashdot Story Generator

This Slashdot parody generates random stories for you.

Timeline+25 Predicts Future

The Ars Electronica (an art convention held in Austria this September) asks people to make predictions about the next 25 years. In 2012, Hillary Clinton is elected for President; in 2015, Windows XP will work properly; 2018 will see the eye implant for watching movies. And in 2025:

“Some scientists discover that using the internet has serious negative side effects. People gradually increasingly suffer what will become known the “zapping” effect. After one or two minute of concentrating on a subject, eg. reading or writing an article, they abruptly change the subject of their interest. Conversations are often broken up abruptly, telephone calls are closed by one partipiant without an explanation. Unfortunately, the investigation of the “zapping” effect cannot be finished, because the scientist themselve loose interest in this topic.”

Ad Blindness

Talk About Banner Blindness: I registered for Slashdot* yesterday, and this was the first time I consciously noticed the advertisement area to the right – because it was suspiciously and visibly blank.

* When you get a sudden stream of visitors, about 10000% of your average traffic, you have probably been slashdotted, boingboinged or wired. Slashdot, by the way, got its name to make for a funny spelling – h t t p colon slash slash slash dot dot org.

StepUp

Stepup is a new localized shopping search engine for the US. [Via Battelle.]

Google Yahoo Lawsuit

“Google Inc. on Monday again boosted the number of shares it plans to sell in its initial public offering, saying it will issue 2.7 million shares to Yahoo Inc. to settle a lawsuit over technology used to display ads.”
– Reed Stevenson, Google to Pay Yahoo to Settle Patent Dispute (Reuters), Aug 9, 2004

National Archives Going Digital

The National Archives are going digital, as PC World reports. The go-live, along with Internet-access, is scheduled for the year 2007. Completion of the Electronic Records Archives is expected by 2011, when it will store several petabytes of electronic government documents, service records of military veterans, weapons systems designs, and documentation on homeland security issues. [Via ResearchBuzz.]

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