Hmmm…..it looks like one of the “authority status” sites had it’s PR slashed from PR4 to PR3! It’s The Joke File. Amazing! I wonder whether does this mean that they have fewer backlinks but still has the number of search hits required to retain the authority status. And since anchor text and backlinks are important to get top search results and with the drop in PR, what does this really mean? Is Google really looking into content now? Are backlinks losing their importance already?

What are your thoughts about this? A PR3 site doesn’t have a lot of external links. I could create a PR3 site in just 2 months. This blog is a PR3 and has very few backlinks. This probably leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions. In time, I hope to understand more about this.

And before I forget, happy May Day! Let’s go to the beach.

Gaming time! Yes, let’s talk about computer and console games. If you are into gaming, you will find the next site I am going to introduce you very useful. GameFaqs is all about game codes, cheats, walkththroughs, hints and tips. You will a huge collection of hints and walkthoughs, from the very ancient games to the latest brand new games right here on this site. Console sets like PS2, PS3, Xbox, Wii, Gamecube and GBA are all represented here. Cool! A one in all gaming hints site. It even has my favourite Starcraft walkthough. Did you know that the game Starcraft is still being played regularly in Korea? Luckily, they are not like my friends and me, we are still playing Microprose’s Master Of Orion 2! In case you are too young to know what is Master Of Orion 2, it was released in 1996. Yes, just after Windows 95 came out. If you like more information of Master Of Orion 2, please take a look here.

But guys, remember games isn’t everything. There is beer, girls and my authority sites blog too. And sometimes, you may even need to pee as well. Just don’t do that in a bottle, go to the little boys room for god’s sake.

I am here again to introduce to you guys another site. This time it is on DogPile. No, it is not shit or crap, but it is a meta Search Engine. What does this mean? Well, it means that the results from DogPile is actually from different Search Engines compiled and sorted by DogPile. Of course, they add some sponsored results (read: Advertisements) in it. They take results from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask, jingle it about and displays them to their users. Sponsored results has the wordings “Sponsored by lalalala” below the results. From what I have discovered, the results are quite relevant, but then I still goto Google for my regular searches.

If you would like to try, goto DogPile. Just becareful not to accidentially step on dog poo. And in Korea, the word DogPile has a whole different meaning.

Ahh…..one more site to introduce to you guys. It’s The Visual Thesaurus. This is a dictionary/thesaurus site with something very different. It has a “thinkmap” of words! Sort of like an easy way to visualize words and phrases. If you key in a word, it will branch out to other related words, definitions, synonyms and continue on, you get a more concise understanding of the word and it’s uses. As it is said on their website, writers use it as an “ideas generator”, while marketers use it to think up new names or slogans and teachers use it to spice up their lessons.

But this is not a free service. It cost US$19.95 per year for the online version. But I tried their little trial and was impressed. Anyone willing to sponsor me for a whole year?

It’s another one of those blog post again. Let me showcase another site - GsiteCrawler! And what do you get? A sitemap generator and if you are using Windows, you are in luck! You can use it! But seriously, this is a powerful piece of software, you can generate Google Sitemaps (XML), Yahoo Sitemaps (txt) and even RoR sitemaps. Heck, if you have the time, you can even create HTML sitemaps from it! It follows Robots.txt rules too. It also has a flexible URL list which you can edit or delete any URLs later on. And this software is available for free. If you are a Mac/Linux/Unix/Dos/AlienOS user, you need to look for other software to do the dirty work for you. Well, if you guys don’t mind me saying “I love my Windows”.

Wait, what’s a sitemap for you ask? A sitemap is sort of like a map of URLs, meant for Search Engine bots to easily navigate your site. Although it will not always follow what is shown on the (site)map, it probably will help your site get indexed faster and more efficiently. I think a sitemap is most important for a new website as it gives Search Engines a layout of your site for them to crawl.

Please visit: GSite Crawler.

This release caught me by surprise. I didn’t expect it to be released so soon. David must be really pushing this new version out like mad. You can read more on the changlog for verison 3.20 here. I think I will be doing a little review of this script’s new features later on. Maybe post a few screenshots of it as well. I am using PhpLinkDirectory for all my directories, including the Authority Sites Directory and the High PageRank Sites Directory. I find it suitable for my use and it’s very easy to setup and install. Further, it is very popular and thus you can find a lot of mods available for it. Some you can even get it for free. Oh, I forgot to mention the numerous templates available too.

And, we have another one of those interesting websites to introduce to you. It’s the weird and whacky Space Adventures! Err…. this site is talking about Space Tourism, yes, that’s right, rich folks just find that bungee jumping is not exciting enough! They need to walk in Zero gravity or visit the International Space Station to get their kicks. Maybe in the near future, only the poor will live on Earth, the rich will be floating all about in some space station somewhere and get attacked/blasted by Aliens irritated by their constant whining about how their ugly spaceships are blocking their scenic view of the cosmos. It’s too bad that when Aliens first met humans, they will only see the worse of mankind. Hope we won’t be invaded by Aliens anytime soon.

Found another very interesting site. It’s Incredible Adventures. What this site does is to provide you with the means to search for the ultimate adventure of your lifetime. You can fly a Fighter Jet, go for space training in zero gravity, go look for sharks in the deep sea and even go for Special Operations!

Crazy right? Some people will just go to the ends of the world to look for thrills. Yes, usually rich and crazy people. For me, I just look for some cheap thrills, like shocking myself with my electric toothbrush.

Link Vendor! Don’t let the name confuse you, it is not a site selling links. More of an SEO tool site. And I have been using it for a while now. One of the nicest and coolest tool is the Visual PageRank tool. It allows you to see all the PageRank of every link on a certain page so that you won’t need to go and manually check each link yourself. A time-saver. I have been using their service to check all my webpages.

Of course, that is only one of the dozen of tools they have. All the tools on the site is free. Only problem is it requires you to do an image verification everytime you need to use a tool. Can be a bit tedious if you ask me.

Visit: Link Vendor

Yes, there is indeed a very cool Authority Status Site called, wait for it…….PayPal Sucks! I am serious, this site is given the “authority site” status by Google. I wonder how many people searched for the term “PayPal Sucks” for it to get the status? And poor PayPal….a lot of users pissed off with PayPal will have a field day with our great Google Search Engine who supplied them with information to take on the online merchant.

Oh by the way, Google has an payment alternative to PayPal called Google Checkout. Yes, it is a direct competitor to PayPal and is supported by Yahoo and ebay. Yes, and if you never heard of Google Check, it is because it is not a popular choice. There are many better online payment merchants out there. And Google came in very late in the game, so the market is already occupied by several big merchant services. Anyway, I doubt that Google is very serious in this online merchant gig as there is very little advertisement or promotion on Google Checkout. If they were serious, you would have heard about it long time ago.

Oh, and I am not suggesting anything, but it is best to run far far away when the big boys come to play. Especially when they play with fish.

Okay, I have just discovered a web stats script called Extreme Tracking. Sort of like Google Analytics kind of script which you embed on your website and monitor the visitors and their behaviour. This is an authority site according to Google. It offers basic monitoring service for free and your stats is accessible by the Public. If you are looking for something more discreet(and non-public), you need to pay for the privilege.

However, one thing I realized is that the major Search Engines seem to treat Extreme Tracking very differently. Check out the number of pages indexed by Google (156,000) here. And then check out the number of pages indexed by Yahoo! (1) here. In addition, check out the number of pages indexed by MSN (7, 492,310) here. And for Yahoo!, they have about 17,826,781 backlinks recognized!! This is as confusing as it gets. There should be some sort algorithm that is causing this to happen. Looks like the major Search Engines have a long way to go before perfecting their search results.