Google likes me!

Google will always be a bit of a mystery. I know roughly how pages get indexed and ranked: Google looks at body text and page titles for indexing, and ranks pages by the number of individual other pages that link to them. But some of the hits I'm getting from google are baffling.

Before Google launched their new scholar engine (and probably added a lot of scientific pages to their database), this page at the ID-Studiolab was the 7th hit when you searched for assistant professor. How on earth am I the 7th assistant professor? Even now, I'm on the 2nd page of results (though my ranking may change by merely mentioning the page on my blog).

Google may just be very weblog minded these days. The ID-Studiolab is using a blog-based CMS, just like Hoeben.net. SPi-V dev, the developers' resource for the SPi-V engine is based on Drupal, and since the site has gone public it gets similar great ranking in google for the strangest of search phrases:

• Apparently, SPi-V is the second most important application in the world that ever had a missing progressbar issue (google), and the third app in the world that has a standalone viewer (google)
• But surely I am not the 8th person talking about Shockwave 8.5? (google), or the 6th person embedding Shockwave? (google)
• When I delve further into the specifics of Shockwave, I'm the first hit for swStretchStyle (google)
• But ofcourse I'ld much rather be 1st than 3rd when looking for a shockwave panorama (google)

So Google really likes me. But I don't know why. I could understand why my ID-Studiolab page gets indexed so well (though there are other assistant professors at the lab who have a page as well, what makes me more special than them?); many people over the world link to the ID-Studiolab website. But the only one linking to the SPi-V dev pages is me, from the fieldOfView website. Could it be that my pages get ranked higher because Drupal makes all links to SPi-V dev pages absolute pages?

Update:

It's not just SPi-V dev either. Searching for the lingo command importFileInto() brings you almost instantly to hoeben.net!

Update 2:

As google-favoured assistant professor, I am back on page 1 as of januari 10th. Hurray! More amazingly, I am now the first link when looking for 'embedding shockwave' (up from 6). Just after I posted this story, my 'shockwave panorama' ranking dropped a few places, but now I'm back on the second spot again... Nice!