How to improve Alexa rank?

Popular blogger Maki at doshdosh.com has come out with 20 different ways to improve one's Alexa rank.

Some of them are quite obvious and straight forward like ...

1. Install the Alexa toolbar
2. Put up an Alexa rank widget
6. Write or Blog about Alexa

While there are few, well thought innovative ones ...

9. Use Alexa redirects
10. Post in Asian social networking
18. Pay Cybercafe owners


Maki's post contains a very good introduction about Alexa Rank and why would someone be interested in it? The blogger has also explained it simple terms on how to get started with Alexa. There is also section which talks about the problems and credibility of the ranking system.

Check it out for more details

Google Page Rank is just one of the factor

Danny Sullivan of search engine land has come up with an excellent article about Google Page Rank. he starts with the basic facts about page rank.

In a nutshell, it considers links to be like votes. In addition, it considers that some votes are more important than others. PageRank is Google's system of counting link votes and determining which pages are most important based on them. These scores are then used along with many other things to determine if a page will rank well in a search.

Danny goes on to say that Google is somewhat qualifying that PageRank is important but not the sole factor in how pages are ranked.

He supports this fact by illustrating with an easy example.





In the above result, you can see that Movies.com which is listed first has a PR8 score while the Internet Movie Database listed second has a PR9. The page with a lower PageRank still got the higher search rank!


Here are some more interesting points at the end of his article.


PageRank tells how important a page is, relatively speaking, compared to other pages.

PageRank is just one of MANY ranking factors used to determine ranking in search results.

High PageRank does NOT guarantee a high search ranking for any particular term. If it did, then PR10 sites like Adobe would always show up for any search you do. They don't.

The anchor text of a link is often far more important than whether it's on a high PageRank page.

If you really want to know what are the most important, relevant pages to get links from, forget PageRank. Think search rank. Search for the words you'd like to rank for. See what pages come up tops in Google. Those are the most important and relevant pages you want to seek links from. That's because Google is explicitly telling you that on the topic you searched for, these are the best.

Are Vizu Polls accurate?

I have been using Vizu Polls for a while now as part of monetization of this blog. Today I noticed a new poll and voted my choice in the given options. I found something funny in the responses screen. The percentage of responses did not sum exactly to 100%. Indeed they add upto 15.1+24.7+24.7+46.2+19.4=130.1

Has anyone else observed this?



As a blog publisher I dont care much about this issue. But I feel pity for the ones who paid for this poll. :-(

Google's Brand Value at $66 Billion

CNET News reports that Google has knocked off many traditional companies to reacg the top spot and been named the most powerful global brand of 2007 in a recently published ranking.

Google ranked first with a brand value of more than $66 billion, nearly double its value in the 2006 ranking.

According to Millward Brown Optimor, here are the 10 most powerful global brands of 2007, plus brand value:

1. Google--$66.4 billion
2. General Electric--$61.9 billion
3. Microsoft--$55 billion
4. Coca-Cola--$44.1 billion
5. China Mobile--$41.2 billion
6. Marlboro--$39.2 billion
7. Wal-Mart--$36.9 billion
8. Citigroup--$33.7 billion
9. IBM--$33.6 billion
10. Toyota Motor--$33.4 billion

How to get DVD's on your iPod ?

Vonage may file Bankruptcy !!!

Some bad news for Vonage Customers .... Vonage has just said that if their legal battles continues then they may end up filing for bankruptcy.

Here is what NY times has to say about the news ...

The filing yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commission also detailed other risks from continuing litigation. They include the possible interruption of service, an inability to repay its debt and a decline in its stock that could lead to the delisting from the New York Stock Exchange.

Vonage was ordered to pay $58 million and royalties on future sales to Verizon after it lost the patent infringement case in March.

The court also barred Vonage from adding new customers while it appealed the decision.

An appeals court allowed it to continue signing up new customers ahead of a hearing to consider a permanent stay on the bar on April 24 .

Vonage’s chief executive, Michael Snyder, stepped down last week as the company said it planned to cut jobs and expenses by $30 million in 2007.

Google adds presentation feature to Google Docs and Spreadsheets

At last Google has confirmed that they are about to add a presentation software to their Google Docs & Spreadsheets family. There were already lot of rumours going around this for sometime now.

Here is what Sam Schillace, Engineering Director has to say in his post

we want to welcome the team from Tonic Systems to Google. Tonic, which we've just acquired, is based in San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia. They have some great technology for presentation creation and document conversion, and it will be a great addition as we add presentation sharing and collaboration capabilities to Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

This feature is expected to be released in summer this year.