Hold on to your seats

Guess what website I found today at the top of page 5 on Google for the search 'web design'...

[ Jul 26 2005, 21:40 ]

That's right, this one, but before you and I perform a bizarre celebration waltz, (as is customary in such circumstances), I should quickly point out that I had my preferences set to '100 results per page'. But - hey! - it's a massive improvement from not appearing in anywhere in the first 1000 results.

Here comes the science bit

Well, the slightly obsessive sad bit. Let's talk about PageRank, Google's mysterious rating of wesites' importance, (based largely or at least partly on the links going to and from websites). I've noticed something a little odd about the PageRank of my 'web design' page. 0 out of 10. OK so it's not the first page in the world to socre nil points but it is about the only page on this site lower that a 4.

Spam alert?

Maybe I've spammed myself. The strategy of changing every external link I could to read 'web design' and to point to my web design directory may well have fallen fowl of Google's anti-spam algorithms. Then again, it could be due to the web design directory being renamed a couple of times, or a collection of other similar and seeminlgy minor factors. Who knows? If I find out, I'll let you know.