Wheels for Google, Google on Wheels

Here, visualization of Google is neither about physical wheels nor about googling for a four wheel drive.
No way.
Google is going fullspeed and needs no wheels, as yet. This post is not even about the Google's Wheel of Fortune!!! And, it also not about what is in another blog: Google: Won't Re-Invent the Wheel or the Browser
In short, it is none of the above.

What is below is another spin of the wheel--Spinning in alpha-numeric terms.

By the way. Wheel has its own ax (or axe) and like all the holy words, wheel has secular, spiritual, magical and mystical dimensions. First the transcendental nexus:
"Chakra in Hindu means "wheel." In Buddhist, Jainist, and Hindu beliefs, Chakras are vital energy centers in the body. continue reading"

And, now the alpha-numeric, with a slant towards digital inspiration:
Information visualization of Google using the wheel gives extra energy to this virtual domain.

See the following two samples:
Google Number Wheel by Philipp Lenssen, July 28, 2006

Google Alphabets Wheel: English Alphabets in Google Search Results by Amit Agarwal on 7/29/2006

Inspired heavily by Google Number Wheel that's a brainchild of Philipp Lenssen, here's a different version of Google Wheel for English Alphabets.

It is easy to read the graph. Each pie segment on the circle denotes the number of Google search results for a particular alphabet. For instance, Google Web search returned 24 billion documents containing the alphabet "a" while just 1.7 billion results for alphabet "q".

From my own blogs:

Web Analytics - A Librarian's Outlook

Web analytics @ Multifaith Information Gateway

Get a free book - Courtesy: [Geeks are Sexy] technology news

Wish to get a free book? Read the following -- (incidentally, this Geeky blog is among the top ten Blogs Of Note, today Aug 1st 2006):

Contest: Get a FREE book from [GAS]

A few days ago, newfound buddy Chip from Chip’s Quips decided to run a "get a free book" contest on his blog. He asked people to give him a few reading suggestions, and the person who suggested the book he would pick as his next read would end up winning the contest. The Prize? One book of a value of less than $20.

I thought that this was a great idea, so I'm going to run the exact same contest. Click here to join the contest

Visualizing Traffic At My Blog Via Mapping The Pathways

A running post, last updated Feb 3, 2007.

This is a sequel to my previous post: Visualizing Comments on Blogs

I am given to understand that 'high blog traffic flows in' if we are writing about Bill Gates, Deepak Chopra, Pat Robertson, (or "Even something inane and mundane gets to be a hit at times"). Read more on this minsdet in my above mentioned blog post

Today, I found another site that instructs on this very subject, but in a different way:

Blogs need SEO too, by Neil Patel, July 05, 2006

Here are the most common mistakes that I see on blogs:

1. Most blogs do not have meta description tags. You can find a plugin for your blogging platform that will easily add it to each post. You can setup the meta description tag to automatically pull the first sentence from your blog post.

2. The URL strings on many blogs are dynamic instead of static. You do not want extraneous characters in your blog.
http://www.pronetadvertising.com/looking%20forward?to@!the231lit.html
You want clean URLs like this
http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/looking-forward-to-the-little-man.html

3. Most blogs state their name in the title tag and then the title of the post.
PaulStamatiou.com - Search Engine Optimization 101
The two should be reversed.
Search Engine Optimization 101 - PaulStamatiou.com. Continue reading from Blogs need SEO too

Measure Map Feeds - and a new Widget
Looking for better representation sources, I found this write up on widget. And, I signed up for Google's venture: Measure Map. But, I don't have access to it, as of now. I believe it helps in visualizing the blog traffic, graphically. If you know of any similar tool (other than Google Analytics) please let me know.

See also:

blog-a-nomics, Gale Martin

16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

Google: traffic, blog

Technocrati Tags: blog traffic

del.icio.us Tags: blog traffic

Weblogology: The Study of Blogs

More on Weblog theory

Punch Line:
Two views about the repeat visitors

Repeat visitors are not a good measurement either - I used to visit Toronto.com a lot, but only because they were really the only game in town. Did I like their site? Not really ... but I kept coming back out of necessity. Continue reading: AJAX Feedback Mechanism

I looked at your traffic stats. What do they tell you? How do you interpret the fact that you get almost NO repeat visitors? Study some A List, high traffic blogs in your field or just in general. What are they doing that you might consider doing? Continue reading

With malice towards none: My repeat visitors in one day (i.e., today) is 12%; and since birth of this blog, repeat visits are 34% on the whole.

Now, do you have any comments on the above two observations and this real-time picture of my blog's traffic, as seen below:



See my previous posts:

Blog As A Teaching Tool

Visualizing Comments on Blogs

This is a running post: Updated 10 Feb, 2008:

Probing the Nature of Blog Communities

5 ways to get more comments and make you smile February 24, 2006 @ Blog About Your Blog

Of comments and commentators @ Sayesha's world
[see: The casual reader, The friend, The banterer, The loyalist, The silent reader, The 'almost there.' The judge, The mistake finder, The 'I've given up' blogger--Which one are you?]

Review: Naked Conversations, the stark naked truth about blogs, Information World Review
A readable book that converts you to the power of blogging

Visualizing Web conversations using Talk Digger, by Frédérick Giasson, August 3rd, 2006

In only 30 minutes of conversation browsing, I noticed 7 interesting use cases (patterns) in the system. I will present all of them by describing what is happening with each of them.

coComment keeps track of all the online conversations you're following in one convenient place, and informs you whenever something is added to a conversation. [Thanks Sukhdev for this lead]

Guardian has an interesting article on how the internet content generation has shifted from 80-20 principle (i.e. 80% of the internet content is generated by 20% of users) to 1-10-89 principle!
i..e one user creates the content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting/offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it! Continue reading Thanks Ashish for this update!

Here is a summary of how my concern to get a comment has been visualized by bloggers:
1. Reciprocal Commenting is rare, but mandatory!
2. You respond quickly and kindly to comments!
3. ... when a complaint is made against blogging ... well then Hare Krishna! .. respond to it, and improve the situation for everyone...!
4. One doesn't elicit blog comments by seeking them.

And my 2 cent's worth responses:
1. Thank you: I learnt what is mandatory, optional and click for 'next blog'.
2. That is your speed to check your traffic. Godspeed you have, I mean.
3. Hare Krishna... is this a Mantra for Bloggers to initiate communication
4. I thought the basic lesson in life is seeking: Seek and You Shall Find; Ask and You Shall Receive. If you hadn't sent me an email on this wisdom, I couldn't have visualized your mind. Are you a Charismatic guru with 3D transparency (as an open source) to enable viewing mind waves!!!
And don't have to say any more. The following comment about a comment says more than enough:

Some people are like potatoes
There are those who are content to watch while others work they are Spec Tators. Some never help, but are gifted at finding fault and tell others how to do it they are called Comment Tators. Source: www.enidnews.com, cited in

Today's rant (a comment I just found):
Interesting post, .... I had something interesting to say, but it took me so long to register for TypeKey I forgot what it was. {and now that blog post in only in google's Cache}

From a Survey on blog comments:

After reading the whole survey — or my selected excerpts — a question remains: are comments a good indicator of the success of a blog? As they remain invisible for the most part — you have to visit a blog and voluntarily click the “Comments” link of a post to read them — it seems that comments are only important to the blog owner and to the commentators themselves. Continue reading the survey @ Blogs for Companies, by Roland Piquepaille, April 10, 2006

Why I don't get comments on my blog? Asked a friend of mine? His blog has a few multilingual and multi-disciplinary posts.

I told him to read the following two comments from experienced bloggers:

First, from Andrews's excellent post on infrastructure (including essence, nature, style, design, etc), presence or absence of comments. He has a detailed note on what makes presence of comments a value-added factor in blogs. I like the closing words in his post:

May be you have a comment on Jacobs' comments about comments. If so, leave a comment in my comments, and I'll try to comment on your comments.

Second, from G V Krishnan (a.k.a GVK), a well-wisher of mine, who responded to my complaint, among others, on two areas: a) why bloggers are so casual about commenting or responding to comments; and b) why no traffic at my blog. I really enjoyed reading his post. One needs time to read this eleven paragraph classic lesson in blogging .... [pl. ignore his golden rule, mentioned in this sermon: "A blog reader's attention span doesn't exceed three paragraphs."] Below is an extract from his post:

Dr. Taher's latest lament is that no one takes note of his blog, self-billed as the world's first website to spread the 'multifaith' message. He had sent out a press announcement about his blog to some 300 plus print and online news sources, including western TV channels. None of them appeared interested in Dr. Taher's recipe for inter-faith tolerance, religious harmony and sustainable global peace...

Dr Taher would have had better showing in the media, if only he had taken to blogging Britney Spears or the Brangelina baby birth in Namibia, Multi-faith wouldn't have a chance. What does Dr. Taher think he is? Dr Deepak Chopra? Or Pat Robertson? But then blogging empowers each one of us with a computer keyboard and Internet connection to reorder the world....

To get noticed you need to blog something that interests other bloggers. Even something inane and mundane gets to be a hit at times. Blogger Glacier who commutes to San Francisco blogs his observations during his daily train trip in BART (Bay Area, Calif., rapid transit that covers four counties and carries 320,000 passengers) in Bartrage.com. It is accessed by over 25,000 readers a month...

Dr Taher is a well-meaning guy with a mission. But then good intentions and lofty ideals count for nothing in the mad, mindless world of blogging. At a recent convention of bloggers held in casino capital Los Vegas they came to a consensus on ground rules for blogging. What is acceptable in blogging is polemics, provocative thoughts, bragging, and grandstanding. Plagiarism is okay. Haven't we heard pundits saying, blogging is like golf? You can cheat, but you need to be polite about it. Continue reading Dateline Mysore: Bloggers Don't Drip Like Leaky Tap by G V Krishnan

These two citations apart, I continued my search for a better understanding if it is all ado about sense making or total nonsense. Luckily, I found two blog mindmaps. Both use creative visualization skills to show how Bloggers converse. The title of the first post is Weblog Conversations. This post is cited by at least three other blogs, but received a single comment. (Another blogger re-worded this title and called it, Visualizing Blog Conversation). The second minmap is a slightly different type, by Nakajima. Nevertheless, for all those who are interested in information visualization (including areas such as, data mining, conversation behavior and communication patterns) of blog comments the above two are excellent mindmaps. These two graphical images can be viewed in a comparative perspective at Data Mining Blog. No comments at this Data Mining post, please note.


My research also found the following:
One blog started a year ago, Comments Blog, and wanted to know expectations of bloggers who read his posts. This poor blog has received no comments, whatsoever.

Some Other Comment Blogs:

Blog Comments Revisited

on blog comments

How to Pay for Blog Comments

Blog comments and SEO

Seth Godin on blog comments

Blogalysis=Blog+Analysis

State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 2: On Language and Tagging
Posted by Dave Sifry on May 01, 2006

More On Sense making

Some continue asking the same question: Why No Comments

P.S. Whatever is the debate, libraries are now cataloging comments. One of these citations seems to be a good model, viz., Public Commenting on Organizational Blogs or Websites. Albeit, posted almost a month ago, it has no comments!!!