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It appears that Google has finally done an update to the PageRank system. It had been a seriously long time in coming being that the game since the last one was nearly six months! Many people rely on these updates to rate the worth of their site. I'm sure that if pressed about the delay, Google would respond, "You and your users should determine the worth of your site." Of course, if something like this were the only judge of a site's worth, then there would be little use to make the PageRank public.       I had the great pleasure of once having a rank of five on this site. After the last update, I went from a five to a four though, which kinda sucked, since nothing had changed. With this latest update, I really dropped, from a four to a three. This is really unfortunate as that's something of a sucky rank. Or at least, it used to be. I noticed that SF Gate dropped to a five, while other new sources didn't change. One friend of mine is now a four, while he has less content on his site. Another friend is still a three and he has a great deal less content on his site.       I have been musing about this for the last couple of days, since it really felt like a blow to some kind form of my pride. The only thing I can figure is that the index has been recalculated based on the number of sites out there and in reality, I was just on the cusp of a four and this new review bumped me to a three. That still doesn't really explain it and I suppose I'll just have to keep writing the best articles that I can, get a few more links (oh yeah, I have more links from other sites now as well), and keep updating my photos. I suppose at this point we all exist at the whim of Google saying we exist.

Damn, what happened? I was doing so well with my PageRank (Google importance ranking system) and now I've gotten hosed a bit. I even wrote about how cool it was how high my rank was, but I now need to retract a great deal of that unfortunately...       For some reason, I've sunk to an honorable, yet lowly four on both the .com and the .net when they both used to be fives. I'm not sure what gives, but I'm apparently not alone as another site I maintain went from a six to a five. Maybe Google has readjusted their percentages based on the number of sites that exist now or something? Who knows. Google does what Google does. And really, it's a pretty damned geeky thing to be concerned about. I think I was just more in to the holy crap factor about having a rank that high when all I do is post tea reviews, travel photos, and my blathering on this space for all to see. There is some merit in this, yes, but apparently Google has schooled me in the fact that there is only so much.

While being a five in real life means that at best, through alcohol you might get to be a seven at a bar, in the web world, it means that you're pretty kick ass. For those who don't know, PageRank (oddly this is a better article than anything on Google) is the system by which Google uses to determine the "worth" of a web page when ranking their searches. They use a great number of other means to rank, but this is the one that probably gets the msot press because people can look it up.       Every so often they update their rankings. This site was a three for the longest time. That's not too shabby, but not particularly amazing. A few days ago, it appears that they did a revision of all the PageRanks and suddenly, this site is a five. That may not seem like much on a one to ten scale, but it's a very sloped scale. For instance, to be a one, I think you just need to have a site people can find, which isn't too hard. To be a ten, you need to have a massive, extremely useful site. Google is a ten and just a few others. The list gets very narrow as you get closer to the top. There's some kind of X and Y squared graph I could do about this, but really, I can't anymore.       So booyah, welcome to the upper half of the web, www.hudin.com and www.hudin.net (also a five now). I've worked damn hard to get here.

If you don't know of him, Robert X. Cringely - www.pbs.org/cringely/ is a clever fellow. He writes about all things technology, looking at trends, analyzing what's going on and seeing where stuff is headed. He's had some great articles on Net Neutrality recently. He also is a pretty amazing guy who can foreshadow the future really well. Rightly so, in his article covering the Apple announcement on the 12th, he pretty much nailed everything that was going to be announced and also knew the reason for it. Naturally he mentions that he knew of this about a year and a half ago. Whether it's insiders that he knows or just a great sense for pronostication, he's a good read.       Admittedly, it can get technical at points, but being challenged is a good thing. He also "kinda" updates once a week. Sometimes it's faster, sometimes it's slower. Whatever the case, it always a good read and he's got one of the few blogs (although he's actually going to be fully converting to this format properly in the future) that I know of with a PageRank of eight. Pretty awesome seeing as how Hudin here only has a three and I've done a lot to earn that three.