If you haven't seen the piece Matt Cutts did recently on page rank, you should take a look.

Matt provides one of the best explanations of page rank I've ever read. After a good look at how to think about page rank, Matt walks through a Q&A that touches on the differece between dofollow and nofollow links, how Google has tinkered with the process fo calculating page rank, and page rank sculpting...

Q: Does this mean "PageRank sculpting" (trying to change how PageRank flows within your site using e.g. nofollow) is a bad idea?
A: I wouldn't recommend it, because it isn't the most effective way to utilize your PageRank. In general, I would let PageRank flow freely within your site. The notion of "PageRank sculpting" has always been a second- or third-order recommendation for us...

There's more detail on this topic in the article.


© n-re-k

Everyone (VentureBeat, Mashable, the Blog Herald) seems to think that Google will soon have a search Twitter function.

Google is definitely collecting data on the web every second these days so the question is when, not if, Google will come out with its own microblogging search engine to compete with Twitter. Google is now preparing to launch a way to index and rank content from services like Twitter, according to the blog Google Operating System.

Twitter has it's own search engine, of course. Google has pointed out two problems with it: it only searches Twitter (there are other microblogs) and it organizes the results by date, not by importances.

We'll see how long it is before the Googletwit Engine launches...

© chrisdlugosz

A new domain you've discovered is offering a variety of Web hosting services and you're wondering who's behind the site and whether its bandwidth will adequately serve your clients. Where do you go to find out?

With the influence of the Web growing, transparency has become a major concern on the Internet. The ability to find out just exactly who is behind a particular website has become important. And being able to find important facts about a web domain (like revenue, traffic patterns, and speed, and contact info) can be important to you, either for business reason or just to assess the credibility of the website. Where do you go to get information like that?

I recently came across the philoneist, a wiki that investigates and tells you what and who is behind a domain name. And with out much effort I found valuable information on a couple of websites I use pretty much every day.

An entry at the philoneist will often give you a screen capture image of the site being examined. That way you know that the entry is really about the site you're interested in.

Flickr has long had a search tool designed to filter images so that you only see the ones with Creative Commons licenses. A few weeks ago Yahoo! added a similar tool. Now Google wants to get in on that search market, and they've added their own CC filter.

The Google tool isn't available yet at the user interface on Google, but Search Engine Land points out that there's a way to access the filter manually. You can see the article for instructions...


© thms.nl

VentureBeat had a fascinating article a few days ago on Aneesh Chopra's appointment as Chief Technology Officer. It looked at a simple question that has probably occurred to many of you: What exactly does a Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. government do, anyway?

Part of the confusion is that there's also a new Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra. And he was appointed before Chopra.

The NT Times has published an interview with Chopra that spells out how he sees the job. The article pointed out that Chopra has four objectives (articulated recently to Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff). They are:

• Economic growth through innovation


• Addressing presidential priorities through innovation platforms


• Building the next-generation digital infrastructure


• Fostering a culture of open and innovative government

Chopra hopes that he can find ways to use technology to achieve the White House's goals more quickly and less expensively. I hope so too...

Remember Looking Glass (Brandy, You're a Fine Girl)? How about David Essex (Rock On)? Now for the tough question: Can you remember even one other song by either of them? Probably not. So, is your website a one visit wonder...?

Ben McKay had a fairly lengthy piece not long ago on how to keep that from happening. You need engagement. He looks at a number of different types of reader engagement. And you need you content to be profitable (as in beneficial) for your site's visitors. McKay's piece is one of the most useful SEO articles I've come across recently.


© Jesse Bikman

© Aaron Gustafson

I've been contributing over the last few months to the content of a vibrant and growing site that points toward the future of the Internet and has profound potential for users interested in search engines. The site is NetworkingForPros.com.

When I look across the web at the moment, it's clear that the Internet of yesterday (static pages where you could find information and news) has been replaced by an interactive, social Internet that is about people instead of facts and figures.

One of those people is you. Today the Internet is about you, and about me.

Who are you? The old model of the early Internet allowed a handful of writers and bloggers to publish information about people. Most of those people that info got published on were the stars - the Madonna, Mel Gibson, Mylie Cyrus, and the like. Who where you in that mix? Probably nobody, because they didn't write about you at all.

NetworkingForPros.com is part of a trend that is changing what the Internet is about. It's helping to make the Internet more about you and less about Tom Cruise and Oprah Winfrey. And the best part is that you can even help control what gets said about you. Using a wiki format, NetworkingForPros.com lets you enter your own information. You can write about yourself and about your friends or colleagues. Like with any wiki, you can comment on and contribute to the pages that other people have started. It's an interactive space focused on providing information about real people. People like you. After all, just because you're not Madonna or A-Rod, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be on the Web.

NetworkingForPros.com is where the search engines of tomorrow start: a place where you can find out about real people, a place where you can contribute to what knowledge is available on the web.

Find yourself and find your friends at NetworkingForPros.com. And if they're not there already, put them there…

The Personal Branding Blog took a look last week at three search engines they were betting we didn't know about.

Wolfram was one of the three. We've looked at it ourselves recently. But the other two were search engines I hadn't spent much time with yet.

OneRiot looks at what's happening on Twitter and Digg in realtime results.... Twine is, amazingly, completely unrelated to Twitter. But it capitalizes on the foundations of social media in that you can join groups based on what you're searching for, and "connect" with people who are searching for the same things.

It's pretty obvious that no one is going to pass google any time soon as the general search engine of choice. But new search engines are looking for niches where they can succeed. Social media is providing one at right now. we'll see what else pops up there...


Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Image# 1266132

So with all the hooplah about Wolfram Alpha, what's the most likely response from Google? TechCrunch had a piece a few days ago on something the people at Google are calling Google Squared...

The idea is to treat the web as a database of information and mine it. Nobody cares what site you got it from. Just tell me... How many acorns does one mature oak tree produce in a year? How many eggs does a robin lay? How far is it from London to Sydney? How much does a giraffe weigh? How much is Warren Buffett worth? Simple questions. So just give me the answers.

Google Squared extracts data from Web pages and presents them in search results as squares in an online spreadsheet.

Want to see a demo? Watch the video from TechCrunch. It's a little hazy, but you'll get the idea.

Stephen Wolfram is a mathematician and physict extrodanaire. And now he's start a search engine that many people think will be the next big thing (and maybe even a Google-killer).

Mashable had a recent story on the new search engine, Wolfram Alpha - which is not up quite yet and has a May 18 date for opening up to the general public. And Search Engine Land ran storys on April 28, May 1, and May 7.

Wolfram Alpha will be a little different than most search engines. It is a "fact engine" evidently designed to give you information instead of (or in addition to) web addresses. When exactly would I use Wolfram Alpha? Adam Ostrow at Mashable says this:

To answer this question, Wolfram Alpha has an "examples" section with about two dozen different sample uses of its technology. Some of these examples are really heady, academic stuff - like the calculus you probably don't remember from college. Others are more practical, like entering in "San Francisco to Tokyo" and getting data on how many miles apart they are, the projected flight path, and current local times. Meanwhile, if you ever wanted to know what time the sun rose and set on the day you were born, type in your birthday and Wolfram Alpha will tell you (and also let me know that I'm approaching my 10,000th day on earth!).

A academic fact engine. It will be interesting to see it when it comes live...