Pre-Thanksgiving Local Conservative Blog Roundup

It has been a while since I've done a blog roundup, and I do not recall doing a conservative one before...so here goes!

Hillbilly White Trash is celebrating his third blogiversary today! Go show him some love in the comments.

The Hendersonville Post has compiled the Google Rankings of various media websites in West Carolina...and crows about Matt Mittan's website having 0 out of 10 while the Hendersonville Post has 4 out of 10 and the Asheville Citizen-Times shares the top spot with 6 out of 10 with the Hendersonville News website.

My Google Ranking here is 5 out of 10, tied with WLOS and Mtn X.

Google Rank is not linear...it is logarithmic, with each increase in rank being by a factor of ten at how important Google Rates each page.

I would caution the author of the Hendersonville Post not to equate Google Ranking with traffic if he had open comments. He does not, so I do it here [link to source for below excerpt]:


Google describes PageRank:[1]

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. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; 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".

In other words, a PageRank results from a "ballot" among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it ("incoming links"). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page.

Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Internet; this PageRank denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google. The PageRank is derived from a theoretical probability value on a logarithmic scale like the Richter Scale. The PageRank of a particular page is roughly based upon the quantity of inbound links as well as the PageRank of the pages providing the links. It is known that other factors, e.g. relevance of search words on the page and actual visits to the page reported by the Google toolbar also influence the PageRank. In order to prevent manipulation, spoofing and spamdexing, Google provides no specific details about how other factors influence PageRank.

Numerous academic papers concerning PageRank have been published since Page and Brin's original paper.[2] In practice, the PageRank concept has proven to be vulnerable to manipulation, and extensive research has been devoted to identifying falsely inflated PageRank and ways to ignore links from documents with falsely inflated PageRank.
Other link-based ranking algorithms for Web pages include the HITS algorithm invented by Jon Kleinberg (used by Teoma and now Ask.com), the IBM CLEVER project, and the TrustRank algorithm.

The Wild West has a report on the Luddite Asheville City Council's useless discussions on whether or not to pass a resolution banning the transport of nuclear waste through Asheville. From her apt description...it appears that there were many anti-nuke activists at the meeting. I will see if I can swipe some video from the City Council Website to show the kooks in action since seeing is believing for most people.

The Carolina Stompers are looking to hire two reporters for their website. I wish them luck in finding intelligent go-getter's.

As for me, I've been marveling at the Blue Dunes on Mars, posting pics on WNC Citizens Blog, and putting the final touches on my GIANT tracking project for the NC General Assembly due to launch in January 2009.