I really don’t have any comments on whether having an ordinary blog roll would hurt PageRanking since I’m pretty sure I have zero link-backs to my page sadly enough LOL. Ultimately in the end I don’t think it has any negative impact at all.

I hit PR3 in roughly 4-6 months of starting my blog or whatever and I’ve been there ever since I quit blogging a year ago (my database had been wiped with no backup). I’ve recently came back.

Anyways .. back to my main point … when I came back … and knowing I had been removed from Random Curiosity’s blog roll due to inactivity (RC brought in a multitude of visitors) I had to rely on Google searches.

The only thing I cared about was hitting the FIRST PAGE on Google on every single one of my Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 posts since that’s the only relevant show I was blogging since everything else was either overblogged or sucked way too hard. Tokyo Magnitude wasn’t either, very very under the radar when the first episode hit … not so much now =). Hitting first page was VERY important since it was the only real source of visitors outside of animenano/ABantenna.

Random info: My visitor source is 40% Google, 40% AN/AB, 20% direct.

And by golly I pretty much met that goal … most of the time … The moment I hit the Publish button I went onto to the good ole Google five minutes later and typed in “Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 XX) XX being whatever episode for the week.

Crossing my fingers I saw my silly post somewhere within the top 5 of the first page most of the time. My ep 10 post is somewhere in a dark void LOL.

Do it right now. Do a search on “Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 11″ If I’m not on the first page … well then … fuck you Google =). I don’t really care if I drop off within 1 week, as searches usually matter during the week anyways …

BTW: I hate how it ranks it differently if you do for example “9″ or “09″

What’s the moral of this silly unorganized unedited mini story of mine? Well it’s that SEO > PageRanking. As long as I can hit First Page ranking on the show(s) I”m blogging, I’m one happy camper since I know there are many more sites (read: bigger more cooler anime blogs) that destroy me on PageRanking that aren’t even listed.

Yes I did beat sites in pagelisting with a PR of 0.

Well, it is nice to see some people share my frustrations with the standard blogroll. I can especially empathize with the “sites of questionable quality” issue that plagues many blogrolls and prevents them from really being useful at directing visitors to the best content.

And in regard to issue about allowing comments, as you can see from this post providing readers with that privilege comes with pros and cons, certainly. There’s also inevitably some anti-spam maintenance work that has to be done, as well. In the end, though, I believe the informative and insightful comments that so frequently add value and additional perspectives to a post are more than worth any potential downsides.

This is especially true with a relatively small and close-knit blogging subculture such as anime fans / Japanophiles.

And I agree about your comment towards Mr. Zaitcevs site as well. A blog is there to share witty stuff and pitch ideas. Few things are more annoying than not being able to give your own opinion on a subject or share your own musings which were ignited by an entry. A comment is not always ‘bland feedback’. Sometimes it’s a valuable addition to the original post or a personal touch…there for the enjoyment of the reader.

I recall some parts of Pagerank being made public…we had to analyse it as a test case in some lineair algebra class lol…though they probably released the info solely because it got changed lol. Either way, you can’t go wrong with deleting the old blogroll. And in the end the new way is better for the visitors and that’s all that matters.

“It also eliminates the interesting group conversation that helps enrich a good post and fosters online community.”

And then I look at the comments above, and I can’t help but laugh at the cruel irony.

At least I was able to provide Owen with some extra entertainment today.