Several interesting articles on the growing influence and popularity of blogs. Google Blogs: How Weblogs Influence A Billion Google Searches A Week points out that frequently-updated and link-rich blogs have increasing influence on Google search results: “how else would blogger Dave Winer outrank humorist Dave Barry in a Google search for Dave? Or journalist Deborah Branscum outrank Debbie Gibson in a Google search for Deborah?” So I tried it out myself: A Google search for “kinsella” found StephanKinsella.com at #3; searching by “stephan” found it at #5. I also tried it out on my favorite site, the very popular, paleolibertarian news site LewRockwell.com: a Google search for “lew” turns up this site as the #1 hit! LewRockwell.com is #6 in a search for “rockwell”.
Other interesting pieces: A blog’s bark has bite, by John Leo; The Power of the Blogosphere, by InstaPundit Über-blogger Glenn Reynolds (and post2); Is Weblog Technology Here to Stay or Just Another Fad?, NY Times; Law Meets Blog: Electronic Publishing Comes Of Age, by Denise Howell (LLRX); and
Let’s Blog! (May 2002 Texas Bar Journal).
A fascinating use of blogs is googlebombing. For example, Google Time Bomb: Will Weblogs blow up the world’s favorite search engine? discusses the googlebombing of a telemarketer called Critical IP who made the mistake of getting a googlebomber’s telephone number off of WhoIs and calling him during dinner. A campaign to googlebomb Verisign is discussed here.
Further info at my blog links and resources.
