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Googleholic for February 19, 2008
Welcome to Googleholic - your bi-weekly fix of everything Google!
This edition covers:
This edition covers:
- Google loses #2 spot on Alexa rankings
- Blueprint of Google's new data center in Harper's magazine
- Google Adwords makes changes to URL policy
Google loses #2 spot on Alexa rankings
CyberNet News has made an interesting observation: Google has lost it's #2 position in the Alexa rankings. Alexa, which ranks website popularity by traffic received, had Google pegged right behind Yahoo. Now, Google has been passed not only by its own YouTube, but Microsoft's search engine, Windows Live. Whether this has anything to do with Google hitting a slump as of late is not clear, but Google is now the fourth most popular website on the Internet (according to Alexa anyway).
Blueprint of Google's new data center in Harper's magazine
If you've always wondered what a blueprint of a Google data center looked like, take a look at this blueprint over at Harper's magazine. It's the plan of Google's new data center in The Dalles, Oregon - which is dotted with peculiarities such as the "Discovery Substation" and a "Transient Employee Dormitory Building." Whatever that means.
Google Adwords makes changes to URL policy
Google Adwords has made an announcement that changes are being made to its URL policy, including stricter policies regarding the display URL in the ad and where the link actually takes you. The main change is that regardless of whether you use a tracking URL or not, the top-level domain of the landing page has to have the same URL as the display URL.
Another Google bit we covered this week:
Google adds post scheduling to Blogger - If you have a blog on Blogger, you can now schedule your posts to publish at any time you want. Write up your draft, schedule the post, set it and forget it.
Comments
4
Subscribe to commentsLeszek PawlowiczFeb 20th 2008 1:43AM
When it comes to site rankings, Alexa is pretty worthless. Remember, you have to have the Alexa toolbar installed to have your visits count in the stats. That toolbar is installed by default in Internet Explorer, but you have to install it manually in Firefox, which I'm sure many don't. That will skew the results towards MS-related sites like Windows Live; there's no way that more people are using Windows Live than Google.
Visitation on my website (freegeographytools.com) is up 50% since October as measured by Sitemeter and Google Analytics, but Alexa shows my traffic down from that time period. And I get 80x more traffic from Google than I do from MS (that's a multiple of 80, not 80%). I know which data I believe.
RocketboyFeb 20th 2008 11:27AM
Does Alexa count the 'home page' as a hit? If so, wouldn't that favor Microsoft by default?
benFeb 20th 2008 11:33AM
actually it is only in the global ranking that live.com beats google. because google for other countries are listed as separate web sites (like google.fr) however live.com serves all countries from a single web site
to do a real comparison you need to add all google sites vs live.com
MarshallFeb 20th 2008 12:10PM
Since there are high voltage power lines just to the west of the "Discovery Substation" and a BPA tower just to the north, I would say this is an electrical substation providing lots of power to a very needy data center. As for the "Transient Employee Dormitory Building," if you have ever been to the Dalles, you know that they are going to have to hire people who don't live there, but it is a really long way from Portland to be driving every day. They probably offer a place to sleep either for employees who will just be there for a short while, or are making it easier for those who would otherwise need to rent an apartment in the Dalles and go home on the weekends.