Mountain Surfing

In the world of Search Engine Optimization, Ranking plays such a vital part, that it is crucial to understand how it works if you want to achieve the highest rankings for your own websites.

There are many different facets to ranking, and it is important to remember that different search engines use different ranking methods, however, lets just focus our attention on Google's page ranking system.

Google's PageRank technology is in fact the very heart of the Google algorithm, and because it determines page ranking based on popularity, it can be likened to a giant electronic voting system. Using that terminology, It stands to reason that the page with the most votes achieves the highest PageRank on a scale of 0-10.

However, it is not just about attaining the most votes. Notice how Google explains PageRank voting:

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B..."

"Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance."

It appears then, that not all "votes" are viewed in the same way. A page that already has many votes will carry more weight than one that only has a few.

So PageRank is determined not just by link quantity, but also by link source importance. So in order to increase your PageRank, you need to get as many links as possible from other websites into yours, especially sites with the higher PageRanks, as they can have an amazing impact on your rank. For example, just one link from a PR10 page would normally be enough to increase your websites rank to PR8, but to get to that same rank from a PR3 page would probably require somewhere in the region of about 350,000 links.

The way PageRank functions across the entire web is by means of a logarithmic pattern, where there are very few pages with a PR10 (PageRank 10, the highest you can get), but hundreds of thousands with a PR0 (the lowest). In order for the average to stay at 1, any increase in the PR of one page is offset by a very small reduction in the PR of every other page.

However, there other factors involved as well, such as the location of keywords on your web page. Now you may wonder what the relevance is regarding where your keywords are placed, does it really matter? With Google's PageRank, it does.

It would appear that the higher the particular keyword appears on the page, the higher the ranking, and this applies to your title tag as well. For example, if you had a website that sells laptops, which would be one of your keywords, but you didn't use the word "laptops" in your title tag, then your ranking would be lower than a website that did. This is because keyword placement is a fundamental aspect to search engine optimization and is something that Google's PageRank analyzes.

The frequency of keywords also plays a factor in PageRank. A page about laptops which uses that word 5 or 6 times, may receive a higher ranking than if you used that word only 2 or 3 times. Of course one must be carefully not to overdo it as that could be viewed as keyword stuffing, resulting in your ranking dropping like a tank falling from the sky, or worse, being banned altogether.

One thing is clear. Page ranking is a very precise science. We have only scratched the surface here as there is much more to understand when it comes to understanding Google's PageRank technology, and as an owner of MyInternetBusiness, I have spent allot of time studying this subject so that I can impart some helpful information to my readers.

Steven Chappell

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Find more information here about MyInternetBusiness.

AP - The speaker of the Illinois House took the first step Monday toward impeaching scandal-plagued Gov. Rod Blagojevich, appointing a committee to recommend whether he should be ousted after his arrest on federal corruption charges.

More and more the lines between entertainment media are blurring. The overlaps among movies, television, literature, music, video games and the Internet have become so widespread, it's hard to know where one ends and the others begin. And perhaps no one has done more to intertwine mediums than George Lucas, whose LucasArts released the video game "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" this past Tuesday.

Since the release of the movie "Star Wars" in 1977, the franchise has become an unparalleled marketing phenomenon. Along with film sequels (and prequels), there have been action figures, cartoons, spinoffs, a score commonly performed by orchestras and played at sporting events, multiple book series, video game after video game, a tour at Disneyland, a plethora of fan web sites and pop-culture references in everything from "Clerks" to "The Family Guy". Of course, all that is familiar by now. What's not as familiar is the way "Star Wars" has bled across mediums in telling its vast and seemingly unending narrative. Just this past summer, "Star Wars: The Clone Wars", continued the story that began over 30 years ago - this time in CGI-animated format (the movie itself was a continuation of the TV series of the same name). Now, with Tuesday's game release, more of the "Star Wars" story is being told in an entirely different medium altogether.

Available for Xbox360, Wii, Nintendo DS, PLAYSTATION3 and PSP, Lucas Arts states that the new game is the first to be considered by Lucas an actual chapter in the overall storyline of "Star Wars", "unveiling new revelations about the Star Wars galaxy". That, in a way, makes "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" as much a movie as a game. The plot of the game introduces a new character, Darth Vader's onetime apprentice (played in the game by the actor Sam Witwer), and focuses on his struggle to free himself from the dark side. Along with the monumental inclusion of crucial storyline information, "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" also incorporates two new video-game technologies. One technology, called Euphoria, assures that things always happen differently each time the game is played. The other technology, referred to as "digital molecular matter", works to make the consequences of character actions more realistic. So, for example, if a character blows something up, debris from the explosion is intended to scatter and hit more "truthfully" than it would in most games.

Despite such innovations, reactions to the game thus far have been mixed. A Wired Blog review of the game was tagged with the headline "Force Unleashed Explores the Dark Side, But It's No Fun". Worse than such game reviews though were critiques of this past summer's "The Clone Wars" movie, which critic Richard Roeper called "one of the most mediocre entries in the entire Star Wars catalogue". Add those comments to the scathing opinions many had about Lucas's trilogy of prequels, and one has to wonder whether stretching the storyline across mediums hasn't somehow diluted it. Like adding water to liquor, barraging consumers with diverse content may have taken some of the potency out of the epic story. Still, Lucas and his collaborators should be applauded for their progressive approach to intermingling media. It's a practice that points to the future of entertainment - a future that may eventually see the masses going into theaters and creating their own conclusions video-game style. But hopefully, before taking us there, Lucas and his buddies will find a new story to tell first.

Shad Connelly,

Executive Editor -

Invention & Technology News http://news.inventhelp.com

Reuters - Iraq is failing to give criminal suspects fair trials and abuse of prisoners appears common ahead of the transfer of thousands of detainees from U.S. prison camps to Iraqi control, a human rights group said on Monday.