About that last entry

You might have noticed that my last posting was a little on the linky side -- gratuitously so, even. And the content... maybe not so original. You might have seen similar talking points appear elsewhere around the blogosphere in recent days and thought my posting looks like part of a blogswarm. But it wouldn't be like me to participate in one of those, right?

[31 OCT 2006 13:48:00] Update: The posting from October 24 was part of an experiment by Chris Bowers at mydd.com to see what effect bloggers could have on Google rankings. The idea was to create associations in the internet between candidates' names (Mark Kirk) and websites containing information that might affect public opinion about the candidates (video clip from the CBS affiliate in Chicago). Then, when someone does a Google search on the candidate's name, Google will preferentially offer the website we want people to see.

Did it work? According to mydd.com, the Mark Kirk link was a dud, but actually, it did sort of work. The problem with the link is that it doesn't point directly to the video clip. The URL goes to "cbs2chicago.com/video/", which is resolved on the host side to the default web page in that directory. That page takes a parameter: "id=25835...", but Google didn't retain that level of detail in the search results. So when you search for "Mark Kirk", the CBS site shows up as hit #8, but without the reference to the desired video clip.