Calendar
Network
Feeds
SeekGeek
Wordpress comes up no. 5 in Yahoo search for "blog". No. 7 on Ask. (maybe they've got better algos?...).
PS: Doesn't feature in MSN but nor do any other blogworthy results, so no conclusions drawn from there...
Personally I think Google would be silly not to use the CTR info they have at their fingertips. OK, so it can be gamed, but so can the majority of other ranking factors. And bear in mind that for many sites they have more than just CTR info to judge relevancy by - think bounce rate for one. Combine CTR with bounce rate and you've got a pretty good yardstick for relevancy and "usefulness" of website.
@emanuelh - which stats would you go by for relevancy? Number of incoming links and keyword structure or the actual user's vote - the site they click on and time they spend there? Obviously these are not mutually exclusive - but you get my drift.
@robert.garcia - yes, there is huge fallibility in bounce rates etc. As you say, if the info seeked is all neatly served up on the first page, a quick bounce would actually be a vote of confidence by the user. However, Google's wealth of data does not end there either. They also generally know what you do AFTER visiting one search result. Do you quickly bounce and leave the search altogether? - FOUND. Or do they bounce off the site and go straight to another search result? - NOT FOUND.
Its not a perfect science and certainly extremely complex but you can bet that the best brains on the world are working on it 24/7 and us mere mortals can only speculate...
Another one to watch in this space is Jimmy Wale's Wikia
Its still in its infancy and quality is not good (Yet), but its got all the right tools to make it to search engines what wikipedia is to other online encyclopedias.
Here's another unconventional keyword research tool which I've had a lot of success with: www.seedkeywords.com
« previous1 next »
Story: Does Google Hate WordPress and Other Blog Platforms?