Redeemed!
After my banishment to the #103 spot on Google after my Wired interview, it seems that whatever tweak someone made to banish me has passed and I am now once again a Highly Ranked Blogger (HRB). Hooray!
I didn't notice until I read Luke's post (via Erik):
I was shocked yesterday to find out that on a google search for "Luke", my weblog comes up as #5, beating Skywalker, Perry, the Apostle, Duke and Cool Hand. My first reaction was that someone at Google must have screwed something up, but then it dawned on me that the reason for this is that webloggers are not only link-crazy, they also typically link on a first-name-only basis, which Google obviously picks up on.
I decided to test this hypothesis on some popular weblogs and found the following results:
Mark Pilgrim #1 Dave Winer #1 Doc Searls #3 Chris Pirillo & Sells #1 & #7 Adam Curry #5 Robert Scoble #18 (but of course most everyone calls him Scoble) Phil Ringnalda #1 Russell Beattie #7 Brent Simmons #3 Greg Reinacker #8 Looks like Google works pretty well as a popularity index for weblogs...
I'm not sure if the Google dance is over, but I actually see myself as the #3 Russell, the #7 Russ and the #1 Beattie right now. WOOhoooo!
All hail the mighty Google! Google is Great! Google is Good! Google gives us ranking AND money. Bow down before the mighty Google! (Yes, I have accepted Google as my personal savior.)
-Russ