BLOG

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.