links for 2009-05-15

"One of the algorithmic changes is aimed at making sure the home page clusters reward the freshest and most authoritative blog content. Within any cluster, Google wants to find the posts that people are talking about the most."

Great title. Of course, if the strategy is anything like my approach to picking up girls when I was younger, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for too many backlinks

"This 'doctor', for example, who claims that he's upset by immigration and what it's done to the health service isn't a BNP voter at all. He's a model who is easily found in iStock's photo library. Not only that, but he's almost certainly American - you know, a foreigner! The BNP can't even be bothered to use British models when they're pretending that people are saying stuff."

Great presentation from September 2008 about social media research

Well, 'Search Engine Journal' don't, which means that normally when I bookmark their pages, in order to convey context to my usersI have to add it in by hand. It poses a question for me - at the moment my archives have 'currybetdotnet' in their title tags. Am I better off with that, 'Martin Belam', or nothing at all?

Andrew on how the BBCi page number got to be how they are. I still regret not shouting loud enough that the BBC should have made these numbers consistent across the web as well, so that bbc.co.uk/480 would have been the shortcode to promote Golf on CEEFAX, BBCi and BBC Online etc

I'm normally in broad agreement with a lot of what the Heresiarch argues, and he/she usually writes a tight argument. However, surely "all comments are rubbish / all comments are worthwhile" are equally dogmatic positions, and 'I can look through a hundred com­ments there, and only two will tell me anything I don’t know; that’s because they will have links' isn't an entirely unreasonable position to take?

Very interesting comment on my post about local council newspapers from Edward Welsh, the LGA's Programme Director of Media and Campaigns with links to research showing why councils believe they are a positive thing

Save the EMD cinema campaign on Twitter - formerly Walthamstow Granada, host of The Beatles and where I first saw Star Wars and Star Trek: The Motion Picture)