Spike in "IGOROT" interest, etc...

After a month long hiatus, I'm back and blogging. :-) July is an extremely busy month - what with our 10th wedding anniversary, and the summer hours of playground / swimming pool / tennis court to enjoy. For someone in the Chicago area, summer months are to be savored - like that rare delicacy. But now, July is gone and August is here - the 2nd to the last month of summer before the dreaded 6-month cold season starts. Let's not go there yet though... I'll deal with the cold when its there.

Three things to start the month with:

1. BLOG RE-DESIGN. This blog has been re-designed, woo-hoo! I finally found a template that suits the blog. To my dear visitors, feel free to post any feedback on the blog layout. Of course, suggestions are always welcome. Some caution though - I've tested this layout on latest versions of FIREFOX and INTERNET EXPLORER and it works on both. I did try to access the blog using the IE6.0 browser at the office, and it takes 10 minutes to load the widgets from Picassa and YouTube. Small problem but I always think that browsers need to be updated to fully enjoy the Internet.

2. I finally got PAGERANK! And its not zero. PageRank, that funny measurement of how Google views the importance of a page, has been provided to both this blog and SaGaDa-iGoRoT.com. Apparently, calculating a PageRank involves a complex algorithm that Google will not divulge and includes factors such as # of external links, content, etc... A page with a higher PageRank is supposed to get higher traffic since it is displayed first in Google search results. I don't think it is that simple though - SaGaDa-iGoRoT.com for example was ranking between 5 - 8 on the search term "sagada" when it didn't have a PageRank. Now that it has, I don't see any marked improvement on its search results ranking. It maybe too early to tell.

3. Spike in IGOROT searches. I use Google Webmaster Tools to get statistics on my site. If their figures are accurate (and I believe they are), then, the month of July has seen increased searches on the word "igorot". As can be seen from the chart (click on the image above), my site is listed on both the top 10 search results on "igorot" and "sagada". Comparing the percentage of queries that my site appeared on for the months of May and June, the search for the word "igorot" increased from 13% to 31%; while that of the "sagada" decreased from 63% to 38%. Now, if only Google can tell me why this trend is occurring.