Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Your page may be rank

A lot of people care about PageRank, apparently. Ettarose the saint slash comedienne is obsessed with PageRank. Even my delusional friend Gavin Fukwitski over at pwn greenland is concerned about PageRank. Always has been, although he would probably not admit it in public. That would not be cool. Right now he is mostly irritated that people in India who speak broken English and and have no PageRank are trying to be his friends on BlogCatalog. But I am drifting off subject.

What is PageRank?

A lot of people are under the impression PageRank has something to do with Google's rating of your blog slash website. Those people are correct. My point here, however, is to give you more information than that. Perhaps even some USEFUL information. You never know.

First piece of information is that you need to have a tool in your browser's toolbar to find out what the PageRank is of the page you are visiting. If you have Google's toolbar, then you already have it, of course. There is also one (a better one) on Safari for Mac, but I am not going to tell you where to get that tool because you have all, at one time or another, scorned me for using a Mac in the first place. So I guess none of you need to know. Except Canucklehead who also uses a Mac but who won't read down this far in the post so never mind him.

The next thing you need to know is, once you have that tool to tool around with, is what the number means. PageRank goes 0 through 10 but one is low and 9 is high. So if you have a 4 like most of us, you are not that great but pretty cool. I am only saying this because some of you aspire to have a 1 PageRank and I thought I would clue you in that that is not a worthy goal.

Then.... well, you don't REALLY need to know this but PageRank is named after the inventor of the algorithm and his name is Larry Page. So that is where the name came from, not because you are having a "page" on your blog ranked. Well, you are, but.... never mind.

PageRank is a trademark. Page gave the trademark rights to Stanford University where he was going to school when he was inventing ranking algorithms and devising innovative search engine techniques. Page and his friend Sergey Brin, another Stanford student went on to perfect their little algorithm ranking thing and also their search engine which the boys gave the outrageous name of "Google" to. What a dumb name. But then they went public with their little company recently and cashed in for billions of dollars each, so I guess I shouldn't belittle them.

Although there have been many innovations which make the original concept more sophisticated, PageRank continues to be the basis for all of Google's web-search tools.

What you REALLY want to know is what PageRank really is, what it represents, and, perhaps, how to make your own PageRank higher than it is right now.

Because of all your snotty comments about how long my posts are, I should make you wait until tomorrow to tell you that. I have a notoriously short attention span though, so I will just tell you what I found out right here and now.

First, since PageRank is based (mainly, at least) on how popular you are (doh) it stands to reason that your number is related to how many incoming links there are to your site. Your page, I mean. And if you have links coming in to you from "important" sites (like this one), you get more brownie points in the algorithm. So if the linking website has a high PageRank, you get more "credits" under the algorithm parameters. (An algorithm is just a fancy name for a "system" for getting some job done, in which you include all the variables you can think of to be taken into consideration, so your conclusion is more valid. The dictionary may have a better definition than the one I just gave you off the top of my head, but only losers look at dictionaries, right?)

So... how do you raise your page rank? First you send Larry Page some money. Kidding. He sold out. What you do is make a donation to Stanford. Or Sanford and Son. Kidding again. No, what you do is you (ta DAH!) try to induce people to link to you, and also do things yourself, proactively, which cause links to be placed from other sites to YOUR site.

Jesus, Ettarose, you still have that blank look on your face.

Stuff like commenting on forums, and posting a lot on your blog. Getting on many bloglists (those count as incoming links, and so do those new Google "follower" widgets now.)

Write articles and guest posts on other sites and make sure you put a link to your site in the guest posts. Be nice to others as well: when I get done with this post, as I nearly am, I intend to go back and create links to Ettarose and even Canucklehead. [If you have a blogspot blog, then make a lot of comments on other blogs, because you leave behind a link that takes interested people to your blogger profile. I guess you should make a lot of comments on ALL blogs, not just Blogspot blogs. Sorry.]

There are MANY more things you can do to cause more links to be coming in to your blog or other site. Study up on it. And try to suck up to the very popular sites (like this one) because those sites are weighted more in the algorithm. Stay away from worthless sites like Pwn Greenland or Canucklehead. Some sites are worth paying them money to link to you (like this one.) Kidding. NO site is worth paying to link to you.

[You know what? It just occurred to me that Entrecard could help you (which I just quit), not because of the widget (nobody, including Google, cares about how much 2-second worthless traffic Entrecard gives you), but because several other members might have you on a "drop list" and that is usually a list of links they click on. Hmmmmm. Too late now.]

Of course, there are still those who say the algorithm can be manipulated. Go figure.

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Mortal coil shufflings and Outrageous fortunes

"Wars are not won by some poor dumb bastard giving his life for his country. Wars are won by making some OTHER poor dumb bastard give his life for HIS country." —George Patton
---------

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, [...]
—Bill Shakespeare

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
[Henry V - Shakespeare]