All entries for Tuesday 19 October 2004

October 19, 2004

Be aware, Google will find your blog!

Follow-up to Chasing Che book review from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

Since the launch of Warwick Blogs i've been constantly telling people that if they write entries that are accessible to 'anyone', then Google will index your blog. Our system attracts such good Google rankings that your entry will come to the top or near to the top of peoples searches.

For example, I recently wrote a review of the book Chasing Che. If you do a Google search for that book, my review will be listed near or at the top of the results. This is a really good thing if your want your work to get noticed, and has the potential to promote Warwick's researchers. You will also probably find that, after a short time writing a blog, doing a search for your name will list you very high in the results returned. You blog is associated with your name. Which is also good.

But if you don't want your entries to be quite that public, you need to make sure that Google can't index them. To do so, you must restrict access to the entry to Staff/Students, Staff, or Students or some other defined group.

Update – if you do a search for Motorcycle Diaries review, my entry on the movie comes 11th, with only reviews from magazines etc before it in the list!


Robert O'Toole : 19 Oct 2004 16:52 |  Tags:   |  Comments (2) |  Report a problem

Warwick better than Oxford?

Writing about an entry you don't have permission to view

OK, some of my friends work at Oxford University Computing Services. But when I heard they are starting a blogging project, I jokingly said that 'we got there first'. To which one of them replied 'it's not a competition'.

We have a lot in common with them. Warwick and Oxford generally use an approach called 'research based teaching' which is very different and much more advanced than most other UK universities. It also expects more from the students. Blogging, we think, could be an essential element in that. And lots of others around the world are starting to agree. So despite the fact that we should work with them, it's still nice to be able to say that we're surpassing them.

A friendly rivalry!

But of course it all depends on the quality of the entries. So maybe the Warwick Bloggers can help to make us the best in Britain.

spanish america


Robert O'Toole : 19 Oct 2004 08:25 |  Tags:   |  Comments (4) |  Report a problem