Dr. Runte / Doctor Who

Thanks to Stephanie Johanson for this.

Hoax Web Page Reaches 121

My hoax web page has moved up in the international (American) ratings to 121 out of over 300,000 entries for "Grammar check"; it is holding steady in fourth place for pages from Canada.

Hoax Web Page Update

Well, the hoax web page experiments proceeds apace! As of today, the hoax page is the 5th web site out of 9300 listed under "grammar check" if one clicks on the "pages from Canada button"; it comes in at about 160 out of 313,000 sites if one includes the whole Google www. Not bad for a one-page piece of nonsense.

Hoax Web Page

Well, after letting it sit for awhile (Reading Week, specifically, since the class this is for did not meet) I have checked today to see how my hoax web page is fairing in Google. I was pleased to see that it was listed by Google (Google seems to find any page I post within about 10 days, which is fairly impressive!) and that it has started on the charts at 219 out of 988 pages for "Grammar Check" with the "pages in Canada" button checked (It did not make it into the top 900 of the 310000 web pages without the "pages from Canada" button.) I assume that its relatively high opening is based at least partly on (a) my using meta tags to correctly identify the content to the search engine; and (b) the fact that it is a current page. Now, the class exercise will be to see if we can get it to climb in the ratings by creating multiple links to it. I will have all my students start a blog (or use their current blog if they have one) to comment on the page and link to it, thus convincing Google that my page is getting references. Of course the point is to demonstrate to the class (a) how easy it is to post a page and have it show up, no matter how rubbishy the contents; (b) how search engine optimization strategies can help improve one's rankings; and (c) illustrate some of the lesser black hat tricks to move it up.

So, anyone reading this, if you could be so good as to add a link in your blog to http://people.uleth.ca/~runte/research/surveyresults.htm and either email me or comment using the comment function to tell me that you have done so, I will track how many links lead to how big a rise in the hoax page ranking.

(The hoax page also shows up in Alltheweb, KillerInfo, Answers.com, Kartoo, but none of the others so far... And perhaps significantly, it doesn't show up in Google Scholar.)

brrreeeport

Yeah, well. Just wanted to jump on that bandwagon.

The brrreeeport search engine test (in which lesser known bloggers use the invented word brrreeeport to have their blogs turn up in search engines in response to "the supposed Blog Club, where A-list bloggers only link to each other and thereby keeping lesser-known bloggers out of the loop of recognition" (Jason Miller)) is not unlike some of the informal google search tests I have been running on my blog. The "Corn pops and Pickles" heading used to bring one immediately to my blog, but no longer -- instead it takes you to Naked Bootleg unless you click on the "include excluded entries" button. I suspect that the lack of activity in my blog of late has decreased its search engine ranking to the point where it has simply fallen off the charts.

I haven't been posting much lately because this is my busy season in my day job... which is ironic because I am running two courses using blogs, and it would be nice if students could watch me role model the behaviors I am trying for...but my teaching/research/service load this semester is just too hectic, though things should settle down more in March, when my student teachers go out to their practicums, for which I have no responsibility this term.

I did, however, get up a fake webpage yesterday in the cyberculture course to illustrate (1) how anyone can post anything on the web of whatever degree of accuracy and (2) to see if we could move it up in the search engine listings by utilizing various search enging optimization tricks. So if you would like to play along, feel free to link to the page, since every link raises the sites rankings in google, etc. The site is fake Grammar page.

Incidentally, my favorite hoax site is the Dihyrogen Monoxide Research Division