Trivia: Google PageRank

A bit of Saturday morning trivia: Google's PageRank algorithm, which scores web pages on their importance from zero to 10, is actually named after the chap who developed it: Larry Page.

It's a good job he wasn't called Larry Bottomley, as I'm not sure the name 'BottomleyRank' would have worked quite as well.

• Here's a handy PageRank checker.

• And here's some info about Google's PigeonRank.

Google: 'Results 1-5 of about 0'

So Googling "tasked with a role" (don't ask!) and limiting the search to 'pages from the UK' gives five results.

As you can see from the unexciting screengrab below, Google rather bizarrely calls them "results 1 -5 of about 0".



But then I suppose five is "about" zero. It's certainly closer to zero than, say, seven million is.

From old FeedBurner to new Google FeedBurner...

I use FeedBurner to manage The Engine Room's feed, and as a result of Google buying FeedBurner a while back I've just had to move the feed to a new address.

Google promises that anyone going to the old address will be automatically redirected, so even if you read The Engine Room in a feed reader you won't have to do anything.

However if you are a perfectionist like me, you might want to subscribe to the new feed rather than the old one. The new address is:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/engineroom

If you have any problems with any of this, let me know. I probably won't be able to help, but at least I'll know. And if this whole post means nothing to you, have a cup of tea and relax.

Job titles: Head of Spatial Policy

A regular reader of this blog sent me the following local government job advert a while back:

Head of Spatial Policy

Due to promotion we are now looking for a first class planning professional with the drive and innovation to help build on our success.

With the ability to manage a cutting edge and high performing team, you'll have the opportunity for personal development within an integrated planning and transport section.

So - something in planning? But what's the difference between town planning and spatial policy?

What is interesting, though, is that while Googling 'Head of Spatial Policy' throws up only 173 Google hits, limiting the search to 'pages from the UK' increases that number to 185. Very unusual to see that happen!

And I don't know about you, but I think that public sector job titles should be chosen so that they make sense to most members of the public. I'm not sure this one is very easily understood.

Happy birthday to The Engine Room

It's exactly a year since I wrote the first post on The Engine Room, so I suppose today is the blog's first birthday. Happy birthday to us!


In that time, Apus and I have written 353 posts; we've had 19,477 hits (not including those from our own good selves); and we've made $10.60 in advertising revenue from AdSense. Hey, that's nearly enough to buy ourselves a beer each! I think we've earnt it.

Without being too cheesy, thanks to everyone who has helped, commented, made suggestions, sent in articles and emails, linked to us or just acknowledged our existence.

Oh, and seeing as it's the blog's birthday, I thought you might be interested to see our current top five Google searches (ie the ones where people actually click through to us). I've linked them to the posts in question:

• how many is several

• diarise

• what happens if you pick up a penguin

• sophie ellis bextor naked

• english collective nouns production quiz

The last one seems a bit specific. I'm surprised many people are Googling that exact phrase!

Google search: the naked truth

One of the unexpected pleasures of writing a blog is discovering the strange Google searches that direct visitors to your posts.

In the past few weeks I have written one post about the terms 'fire truck' and 'fire engine' and another about a possibly inappropriate Children's Society campaign featuring a naked Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

Imagine my amusement when I discovered that visitors are now finding the blog via the Google search 'naked on a fire truck'. I do hope they're not disappointed.

And I was going to take a screengrab of this particular search to see exactly where The Engine Room comes – but seeing as I am at work it might take some explaining to the IT department should they be paying attention...