Google PageRank eXperiences

This is a follow up on the "Moving content and search engines" post [1], related to the Google's page rank issue with the "How to create a dynamic signature" guide [2]. When I wrote that post [1], links to the guide [2] started to appear at page 6, so I was wondering how effective the mod_rewrite trick to generate an HTTP 301 error (redirect permanent) was going to be...

Let's see how many time it takes to get rid of the old references.

Well, just checked again and I was kindly surprised. When searching at Google for dynamic+signatures, the guide [2] was found on the first page! In fact, it was the first link! :-)

So... what's interesting with this experience?

First, it seems that mod_rewrite trick [1] proved to be successful. It just took Google a few days to notice the URL change. Although it looks a personal issue, I hope the post [1] helps someone, because when using mod_rewrite to create redirections, it is not obvious that you have to use the R=301 argument to explicitly generate a 301 error (redirect permanent).

Second, definitively, the fact that a page is listed on top of a search engine query, is not directly related to the Google PageRank. I guessed "dynamic signatures" was a competitive enough combination of words for a query, but the page itself is ranked 0 (reported by the Google PageRank extension for Firefox). What's not? Google PageRank is a mistery to me. lol

Last, but not least, I just figured today that Google used a curious method to render the links reported by the search results. The links look (or looked when I checked) like this:

Probably they use this method to track how useful the results they provide are, so they know which link you follow after a query. While Yahoo! seems to use a similar method (not the case with MSN), I have never seen that before in Google. In fact, I've been unable to see that kind of links when performing other searches in Google. hmm...

Something interesting in those links is the argument start. The first link on the list had start=1, the second one had start=2, and so on. I wonder what the other arguments mean. However, since it is pretty easy to change the URL, meaning anyone can easily spoof that information... I don't think that may report anything useful for the Google database. Yet another Google eXperiment perhaps?

Finally, let's compare the look of the search results:

How to create a dynamic signature? | phpMiX.org
phpMiX.org is the home of Markus' Open Source eXperiments, also focussed on discussion of topics related to web design and development.
www.phpmix.org/how_to_create_a_dynamic_signature - 19k - 21 Mar 2006 -

How to create a dynamic signature? | phpMiX.org
phpMiX.org. Open Source eXperiments. Open Source eXperiments. How to create a dynamic signature? Submitted by markus on Mon, 2006-01-30 16:18. Please, use the following PURL, if you wish to link to this guide: Thank you! ... of possible implementations to create dynamic signatures. A dynamic signature is a banner image ...
www.phpmix.org/how_to_create_a_dynamic_signature - 18k

How to create a dynamic signature? | phpMiX.org
This tutorial just shows you one of lots of possible implementations to create dynamic signatures. A dynamic signature is a banner image which is dynamically generated by a small script
www.phpmix.org/how_to_create_a_dynamic_signature

Aside from the previous comments... it is curious that they all use, if not the same, a similar combination of colors to display search results. The other obvious difference is in the description used to accompany each link. While Google extracted the description from the meta tags (which happens to be the same text for all my pages; my bad), Yahoo! and MSN used text extracted from the content itself. Good for them. Though, in this case, it seems MSN was more accurate.

Well, that's basically all I wanted to voice about it. :-)