How's that Google PageRank, Lisa?

[giza]

I think this is a prime example of how Google's PageRank has a bit of a democratic bent to it:



Generally speaking, when you type in someone's name, the very first result in Google is the person's website. Do it for just about any politician, or even people with individual blogs, and you'll see this happen. It also works for corporate entities and non-profits. So for Lisa Paolino's official site to NOT come up when people search for her name is quite significant. I think it's rather telling when a candidate's scandal comes up higher than their campaign's official website.

Moral of the story: Lisa Paolino can get all the monetary donations she wants, but money won't buy a higher PageRank.

In related news, it seems that lawn signs for Daylin Leach and Lance Rogers have been disappearing, yet Lisa's remain untouched. Random acts of vandalism? Or an attempt to sabotage her opponents? I guess we'll find out soon enough on this one.

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it's possible to have superglue on the outside of a sign so theives are stuck to their stolen signs awhile and loose some skin getting it off? Dirty tricks deserve dirty tricks back.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't the glue dry?

[murakozi.livejournal.com]

Eh. Just run some electric fence wire to the sign...

Odds are that it's just the usual idiots who seem to pop up in any election who think stealing the signs for candidates running against theres is a novel, good idea.

[simbab.livejournal.com]

Alternately, cameras are cheap these days—maybe some supporters would be willing to aim a webcam and a laptop out their window? You know, put some motion detecting software on the laptop and hello YouTube!

[simbab.livejournal.com]

Maybe you're just better at webmastering, or, alternately, maybe her webmaster is an idiot? I mean, Google PageRank isn't totally immune to human action (I exclude my Web site and LiveJournal entirely from Google search results), so if you do a better job of following the usual recommendations about metadata and HTTP responses to the robot, maybe teh Great Gazoogle is rewarding you?

But yeah, for a domain containing the search query to come up third is pretty significant.

[linnaeus.livejournal.com]

Since PageRank takes into account how many times a page is linked to, I'd say it's a sign that maybe there are more Democratic than Republican bloggers out there, or at least that more Democratic bloggers are writing about her scandal than there are Republican ones blogging about how awesome and non-scandaltastic she is.

[skippyfox.livejournal.com]

It's no wonder her lawyer(s) want you to remove the article.

[nightwind292.livejournal.com]

how about making it a crime to leave them up even one day after the election?

After 48 hours the police come, take fingerprints, and arrest everybody they can match, and require that the workers who are suposed to set them up be fingerprinted.

[giza.livejournal.com]

That won't work so well for the ones that are on private property.

And I think the whole fingerprint people working in political campaigns thing might meet just a bit of resistance. I'm assuming that was sarcasm though. :-)

[nightwind292.livejournal.com]

hyperbolic reference actually, though if I was staying with the character for it I'd say "putting them on private property is an invitation to confiscation and charges of conspiracy to commit and accessory after the fact if they didn't place them." but I think you get the idea that seeing the signs everywhere troubles me some. All it does is cause name recognition and covers none of the issues. The amount of information you need to vote sanely is rather insane. Not just a voting history, but a full copy of every bill and issue voted on, including riders.

[toumal.livejournal.com]

Dude, PageRank doesn't *prefer* official websites of whatever term you entered. It prefers the most popular, linked-to pages. And the story about Lisa Paolino and the firefighter photo is all over the internet right now, hence the pagerank thing.

She fucked up, and now she pays the price.

[giza.livejournal.com]

I know it doesn't prefer official websites, but 99% of the time that happens to be the first match. The fact that it's not in this case is note worthy.

> And the story about Lisa Paolino and the firefighter photo is all over the
> internet right now, hence the pagerank thing.

Not really, no. Googling for it (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ned=us&q=paolino+fallon&sa=N&tab=nw) only really shows the letter on Scribd and my LJ entry (http://giza.livejournal.com/506789.html).

> She fucked up, and now she pays the price.

Agreed!

[wildw0lf.livejournal.com]

That's really quite amusing :)