Saturday, June 4, 2005
PubSub LinkStats
Over at PubSub, you can check your link statistics – “InLinks” (backlinks) as well as “OutLinks.” [Via Micropersuasion.]
59 Bloggers
John Hart is producing a documentary on bloggers. It’s nice to find Andy Baio and Steve Rubel appear as well. (And if you’re a blogger, it’s not too late to apply.)
Sysops
So what do you say, “System Operator” or “Sysop"? And how do you pronounce the name “Sysop"? Here’s a two-minute discussion on this issue [WMV] from the documentary BBS by Jason Scott. The 3-DVD documentary on Bulletin Board Systems is made available under the Creative Commons Attribute-Sharealike 2.0 license, and so is my video excerpt here.
RSS as Google Sitemap
The Google Sitemaps help file is sparse at times with information. Basically, the Sitemap Protocol is a completely new and independent format – which makes you wonder, why doesn’t Google just use RSS, an existing meta-data format to point to links (and show off their date of publication)?
But there’s a line in the Sitemaps FAQ which reads: “We also accept RSS 2.0 and Atom 0.3 syndication feeds, using the link/lastMod fields.” While it’s relatively trivial to output yet another format like Sitemap.xml from the database, I want to get this to run with an existing RSS2.0 file. Does anyone know what needs to be changed to make it work, if anything? (Is Google referring to the pubDate element of RSS items? If so, why don’t they just analyze existing RSS data?)
I’ve sent off a message to Google using their contact form, but their prelude to it doesn’t give too much hope to expect feedback: “We’re unable to provide technical assistance for individual websites or to send personal responses to every email we receive.”
Google Raters Update
As for the Google Rating program leaked recently, I have confirmation from a current rater that the project is real. Apparently, Henk van Ess’s screenshots published at SearchBistro.com are somewhat outdated, and some of his information is wrong. Raters working for Google have no influence on PageRank, nor do most of them actually understand how Google applies their ratings and evaluations to ranking algorithm tweaks. The source participating in the program told me the leak could have been from someone upset his temporary assignment ended too early.
More Ghost Sites
If we want to invent the future, we need to know the past – what went right, and what went wrong. There’s a lot of interesting stuff up lately at Ghost Sites, in which Steve Baldwin chronicles all that went wrong or only temporarily right in the recent web past:
- Forgotten Web Celebrities: Courtney Pulitzer (she transported gossip of the Cyber Scene)
- Ghosts of the Webby Awards (many of them, though mainstream sites, died in the meantime)
- Measuring Bitrot at The Well.com (10 percent of all things online might be dying, Steve says)
- Memories of Affinia.com (a sort of early Google AdSense)
Also see the Steve Baldwin interview.
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