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Popularity on the web is the same as in the real world — it’s all about having the right connections. I usually find a site by clicking on a link: that is how most of us hop around the internet. Popular sites have hundreds of incoming links from other sites, with surfers following them like pathways. The less popular ones have a few, generally from other websites that have a strong connection to them.
Frustratingly, however, there is no obvious way of seeing how many incoming links a site has. And, perhaps more importantly, you cannot see what people are saying when they do link. People usually give a little description when they divert you to a new site, and it is often informative — “Excellent source of garden-gnome information,” or “Don’t trust this lunatic — just look at his hair!” But apart from the link that you click on, you will never get to see these comments.
The web address — the w w w.blahblah.com bit — can be changed to any site you want to know more about. The bit at the front, the “link”, is what does the trick. This tells the search engine to produce a list of sites that have links to that address. Most search engines will provide a rough total, too.
[timesonline.co.uk...]
Nice to see The Sunday Times sharing a very important point aimed at the user, now I know its not as technical as we are used to round here, but by far the explanation to Mrs. Smith the 62 year old silver surfer :)
Shak
