snowdeal.org > ex machina: the fourth "born on the fourth of july"?

ex machina

the fourth "born on the fourth of july"?

having a long-time blog with a respectable pagerank means that one can often find people ending up at your site intending to find something completely different.

it's funny to think how long ago it seems that i was engaging in long "arguments" about whether or not i was actually clogging up the search the results for galaxie 500 window crank.

for quite some time, i've noticed that i get a non-trivial amount of traffic from people searching for information on thge movie "born on the fourth of july" and being completely surprised to find that out of 15.5 million results, google thinks my account of odin's birth - which i also titled born on the fourth of july - is the 11th most authoritative link for the search terms ( if you search with quotes then it actually breaks into the top ten ).

it's all pretty silly, but i secretly hope that it'll make it to the number one spot.

or at least the fourth.

bookmark: del.icio.us ::digg it ::furl ::reddit ::yahoo ::

12/02/2005 10:03:00 PM 2 comments

2 Comments:

well, it kinda makes sense, given that google uses links within sites to establish pagerank. there are a lot of links with the "born on the fourth of july" reference within your posts, referring the user back to that one. it definitely would boost the number of times google comes across that phrase when indexing your blog. (=

By Anonymous, at 12:08 PM

i think that google mostly discounts links within my blog that reference "born on the fourth of july" because it would be far too easy to "game" the system with splogs, since if that were true i could easily start a "viagra" blog with a viagra post and just generate thousands of links on that blog that reference the post making it rise in google's rankings.

partly i think the high rankings are due to a link from a blogger with a very high pagerank who specifically referred to the post as "born on the fourth of july".

By e3, at 12:28 PM

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[ rhetoric ]

“"it is hard to be brave," said piglet, sniffing slightly, "when you're only a Very Small Animal." rabbit, who had begun to write very busily, looked up and said: "it is because you are a very small animal that you will be Useful in the adventure before us."”

the complete tales & poems of winnie the pooh

[ about ]

this site chronicles the continuing adventures of my son, odin, who was unexpectedly born on the fourth of july at 25 weeks gestation, weighing 1 pound 7 ounces.

he's quite a fighter and you can always send him a postcard to the most current address listed here if you're inspired by his adventures. see the postcard project/google maps mashup to see a map of the postcards.

if you're new, you can browse the archives to catch up. and don't forget to watch a few movies that i made while we were in the neonatal intensive care unit. or if you want the abridged version and you can find a copy, you can read about his adventures in the november 2005 issue of parents magazine.

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