Russ Steele
Earlier I wrote about some search engine optimization work that I was doing and my discovery that NC Media Watch blog had a higher Google Page Rank than the Union's front page. This idea was challenged by the Union's Editor here and here. Rather than participate an unproductive p***ing contest with the Editor, I suggest you do your own analysis and see what the results are. The are procedures are listed below. (See the Update below)
What is page ranking and why should you care? It is how Google evaluates web pages that are searched to determine how important a page is to the requested search terms. Google counts each link into the web site as vote for the site. If NC Media Watch has ten incoming links and the Union has two, Media Watch gets ten votes and the Union two. In reality it is a little more complex, as Google checks the quality and relevance of the links, text in the links, the page rank of the site the links came from, and whether the links are one-way or reciprocated.
I found it very interesting as I surf the Internet to look at how Google ranks the sites I am visiting. If you would like to Check out The Union, or any of the local blogs here is the process.
1. Using your Fire Fox or Internet Explorer browser Go here: http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/
2. Select Tool Bar and download and install following the instructions. (The Tool Bar is an add on feature to the standard Firefox or IE browser.)
3. Once the Tool Bar is installed navigate to a web site of interest and check the Page Rank in the Tool Bar. There are ten increments on the bar, with 10 the highest. A blank bar is no rank, so there are really eleven possible scores from none to 10.
4. Check out the Union's Front Page rank here: http://www.theunion.com/apps/
5. Compare to NC Media's rank here: http://ncwatch.typepad.com/
6. Compare to Rebane's Ruminations here: http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/
See how easy it was. You might want to check the Union page several times. Once today it appeared that the Union rank jumped from three to five. But, this evening it is back down to three. Not sure why, but I captured the ranking with my screen capture program. (See Update)
Update: The varying page rank for the Union is solved. There is difference based on how you access the site directly or as a cashed page. Using www.theunion.com produces a different ranking result than www.theunion.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage. Both URLs produce the same front page, but different rankings. Interesting.
Here is the ranking with the shorter URL:
