I am in the top 2% of blogs at Technorati.com which of course puts me at number 316,781. That statistic puts a dumb look on my face every time I consider it.

I don't mind being in the top 2%. That is where I am used to being. However, coming in 316,781st really fugs me up. I don't like coming in 2nd, much less 316,781st. It fugs me up even more when I consider that only one tenth of one percent of the supposed gajillion blogs out there are even maintained. Sadly, that means there are a significant number of dead web sites out there that out rank me.

I know that I am just a lowly ranked blogger, but it sure seems to me that using a ranking system that is so heavily weighted by the number of incoming links was a bit shortsighted. A more accurate system would also take into account, with equal or more weight as incoming links, the frequency with which the blog is updated. I'll even help out the effort by kicking in a formula.

Assume the new variable for update frequency, (f), to be a ratio of number of days updated, d, to the number days since created, c. For each day a blog is given a value of either one or a zero depending on whether the site was updated. Multiple updates in a day has no affect.

so, f = (Σd) / c

This value will always be a number between 0 (never updated) and 1 (updated daily). A perfect value for using a coefficient to add weight to a ranking system variable. An existing ranking system can be modified to take advantage of this new weighting by just adding x(f) to the existing formula, where x equals whatever value is sufficient to make a meaningful difference in the rankings. For example, if a ranking formula currently results in a rank between 1 and 10, a good coefficient might be 1.5. If the current ranking formula results in a value from 1 to 30,000, a coefficient of 4500 might make sense. To give update frequency, f, more weight in the formula, bump the coefficient upwards. For less weight bump it down.

There are several benefits of adding update frequency to PageRank. Here are a few:

• Regularly updated blogs will tend to rise in the page rank systems, allowing surfers to find the most current information.
  
  
• Advertisers will have better information about with whom their ad dollars would be best allocated.
  
  
• New bloggers can get more page rank by actually writing more instead of wasting time with futile and discouraging efforts to get a stinking link from a stinking site.
  
  
• Because the page rank of incoming links is also very important in SEO, established sites would have incentive to keep their blog rolls updated, removing stale sites and adding fresh sites, making it easier for prolific writers to get a stinkin link from a stinkin site.

Let's face it, aside from those who blog purely for fun (which is what I do now but not so much by choice), the whole purpose of tracking one's rank in Technorati or the TTLB Ecosystem is that it serves as an indicator as to how your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts are going. If you want to make money writing on a blog, even just a little bit, SEO is the key.

SEO is so important due to the fact that for mere mortals most traffic comes from search referrals. On average, ninety percent of my traffic comes from search engine referrals. On some days, no search referrals would mean zero hits. There are some topics that my site does very well on, but others, especially current events, I get diddly because my site is listed on page 316 of the search results. (Which seems to be consistent with my Technorati rating divided by 1000. Go figure.) This sorry showing is because my Google PageRank sucks. Lots of commentary on lots of subjects over a long period of time is simply not sufficient to increase your page rank much past four or five. You got to go suck some ass to get some incoming links. (Some real-world advice that applies here as well: When you go ass sucking, make sure you are sucking the right ass. No sense in sucking a bunch of ass you don't need to suck.)

Using an update frequency variable, a regularly updated site with a few fresh incoming links would be on par with stale sites that have hundreds of mostly stale and dead incoming links. This balancing occurs not by subtracting anything from the PageRank of stale sites, but because other sites with fresh incoming links will get the most benefit from the update frequency boost.

Admittedly, this new weighted page rank variable makes the most sense for blogs (and those who advertise on blogs). There are many sites that are for the most part static, e.g., encyclopaedias, dictionaries, specs, academic papers, etc. but provide good and valuable information. Surfers still need access to that information and will be done a disservice if those sites eventually get moved to search results page 316. Google already uses a dampener variable that could be tweaked to offset the update frequency for static sites.

After taking a little break to shove some food down my kids neck, I decided that Google wouldn't even need to implement an update frequency variable in the PageRank formula. If Technorati and The EcoSystem implemented it, the new link culture that ensued would fix the Google PageRank by default as established bloggers, out of self-preservation, would be constantly scrambling to keep the freshest bloggers linked.