Funmurphys: the Blog

Food For Thought

Somebody searched the Washington Post website for the words let’s not David Broder and this blog was the number 1 result. Number 2 was a Washington post page, followed by a mixture of “real journalists” and blogs.

This is amazing. No, not that any blog would mention the amazingly boring David Broder, but that a blog with little traffic would beat out a newspaper at it’s own site on a search of it’s owncolumnist. It would like asking for a power tool at Home Depot and having the manager tell you could get the best deal on it at a T-shirt store down the street.

I wonder. Google stormed to the number one search engine with algorithms that rank blogs highly. They’ve tinkered with the formula, but blogs keep coming out on top. I wonder if they bought blogger because they noticed that using neutral yet relevant algorithms blogs kept coming out on top. Could it be Google figures even if they can't point you to the best match, they'll point you to somebody who can?

It's a common refrain among those bloggers who keep tabs on the media -- "Don't they know how to use Google?" And if they do, or even when searching newspaper sites, they keep coming across blogs. Is this the sort of thing that is causing a change in attitude within Big Media, as reported by Jeff Jarvis?

I'd much rather think about this kind of hit than all the ones I get looking for lady's hirsute pits.