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Google is launched!
dpavlin writes "Google, my favourite search engine has came out of beta testing.
Press
release is also online. " Google's just so darn pretty.
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They managed to keep the interface clean while making it better looking and there's still no banner ads. --Sean
Used it five times already today, and all I noticed was a few extra colours in the goooooooooooogle bar. Really got to pay attention.
There's no point in saying -- but I will anyway -- that google has pretty much become the default engine for anyone who wants to find relevant results. Great stuff, and with a page that isn't cluttered with crap. Well done to all concerned.
i was honestly a little skeptical at first, but after using google for a while now, it is definetly my favorite search engine
Long live beta testing.
Woo hoo! Google IS cool -- no ads. I like it.
I've been following this project since their first public beta test. I still think it needs some polishing, and a way to limit the duplicate hits that are mirrors of other sites. But overall, it is clearly the most powerful search engine, even if it isn't the most comprehensive or current. (for example, doesn't search usenet or newswires as Dogpile does. Fortunately, the caching feature helps to make up for the old links that have expired.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
The Web is getting increasingly encrusted with junky pseudo-apps that don't really do very much useful. Certain well-known search sites have evolved in that direction also.
I find that Google is just great at nailing down quick references to things. I type in "Georgia counties" or something for some work project and find pretty much what I need immediately.
I would pay folding money for them to keep it this simple and good.
--------
Bill Gates Is My Evil Twin.
It used to work just fine, but now I get a JavaScript error in Navigator 4.03 when accessing the main page. Fix it, dammit!
The press release says: "Patent-Pending PageRank Technology". Not too happy about that...
I get a javascript error when I bring up google. They have a few (though perhaps minor) bugs to iron out.
--JT
That is one sweet little engine man. It is not junked up with banner ads and "extra" junk on the main page, or the results page. Decent.
It does what is supose to great, search.
Ever notice those "other" search engines? They are supose to search, but for some odd reason it is hard to find the input box for your keywords. It takes 15 minutes to load with all the bloated ads and spam, they make em look greasy.
I think I have to switch search engines...
Here's a link to a SciAm article that talks about Google:
e /0699raghavan.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/1999/0699issu
Todd Stewart
Well, they are going to have to start selling ads somehow I suspect. How are they going to pay off their startup capital?
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
Yeah, if you like completely broken and non-compliant HTML.
I mean, I love Google, but it is NOT hard to produce proper HTML, and it makes it less useful.
check it out ...
I've found the caching to be very useful, especially when I was trying to find information about something where suddenly many of the related pages had been pulled down due to legal issues.
Google is number one in my three favorite search engines, and I'm glad to see that they aren't resorting to all the ad-clutter that is so rampant these days. Way to go, folks!
Just had to add that little remark.
according to netcraft
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
Line 44
;-> Blame it on MS.
Char 1
'document.f.q' is not an object.
Go figure the scripting breaks between yesterday and today when it's "released".
That's under IE5, of course.
Love the beast, otherwise! (Google, that is... not MS or IE!)
mindslip
Sure, they just launched the engine now, and they don't have clutter, or banner ads, or other cross-selling junk, but it won't last.
We had a local radio station that went commercial-free for months just to bolster its listener base. They, of course, started advertising because someone's gotta' pay the bills.
At Google, just like everywhere else, something has to pay the bills. The clutter will come, it's a fact.
-- I lived through the IPO Rush of '99
For all y'all who are praising Google's lack of ads, it doesn't take too long to find this page, which basically says that ads are on the way.
Don't bitch too hard, though... ads make a lot of cool stuff free (slashdot, yahoo, altavista, you know this list could go on forever).
RP
There is no substitue for the boolean expressions in Alta Vista Advanced. Google also can only handle about 3 terms, anything more it seems to ignore it. For really simple stuff, Yahoo and Google are fine.
The more we have engines like Google, the better the Net will be indexed as a whole.
It's not really "completely broken and non-compliant HTML". They just, for whatever reason, didn't use any quotes in their tags. I imagine some coder got tired of escaping everything. It's not the best form, but at least it's consistent. I'm not aware of any browsers that will not render this properly.
----
We all take pink lemonade for granted.
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Waah....the relevance bars and the single click backlinks to referers are gone.
I miss them.
Damn, its times like this I wish I could maybe move down to California and get in on the start-up action. Sounds like Google could be the next Excite or Yahoo, can you say $$$$ ?
And what about this, while we're being sticklers? :-)
----
We all take pink lemonade for granted.
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
what are the other 3?
I used to use altavista.digital.com back when it was 90% searching and none of the extra stupid crap that's they've got there now. In the last 2 years or so it has gotten worse and worse. Now altavista is a complete piece of shit (with the exception of babelfish, which escapes criticism merely because it's funny).
Are you listening, Altavista? You suck! Real search engines do NOT sell the top results to paying slime. They do NOT waste users' time with wasteful cruft. They do NOT advertise!
http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query? text ...
You could click on Advanced Search, too
keywords: scientific american google
-> I'm feelin lucky
there you go - google is great!
...
as you could easily find things... 4 months ago I found google by accident, use it ever since and only use babelfish from time to time at altavista.... Hope they get the small problems fixed now... I wonder how many linux boxes they have runnning there now....
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Google is simplistic, returns results, and only takes a second to display the results. No fancy graphics, that is the true beauty to google.
It's a web search engine, not a usenet search engine or a newswire search engine. If they added in all the newswires and the festering morass that is USENET, the relevance of my search results would plummet as useless crap about East Timor and a price drop in soybeans entered the picture.
For some odd reason, I've never tried to customize the button (ie. I've been selecting google from my bookmarks). How can this be done?
The default setting takes me to some bogus Netscape/goto.com search engine. Surely this can be changed?
(although a google search on "customize netscape search button" does not come up with the soln).
The only reason Google had a 'clean' interface is because they weren't accepting ads yet. They'll appear, just wait a month or two for their salespeople to get on the ball. They've already got Javascript, from what other people said. Then...frames, animated .GIF's, "Click here to buy related merchandise", stock quotes, you name it, it'll be there. Google's owners didn't acquire an asset just so they could provide a few propellerheads with a playtoy.
I'm still waiting for the Search Engine that will GPL its source code.
Probably what's keeping search-engines from doing that is the fear of website owners that will use this as a method of getting their pages rank higher then they should have.
thats too bad. I'd love to take a look at their algorithms and implementations
Ballerinas have fins that you'll never find
You can still get backlinks. Use the link: keyword, with the URL you want backlinks for, and you'll get what you need. It is kind of a pain that you have to go through the extra step, though
Did anyone find the Linux search? I think the idea of seperate search engines for different content categories is the way to go for the future. There's so much crap and conflicts of context that it chokes the relevant information lower on the results set.
"I am not a number! I am a free man!"-- The Prisoner
Next time you get a page with the drop down, copy the HTML form and create your own page (could even be locally on your HD). Then use this page. Google doesn't care where its requests are coming from, and in fact they give instructions on how to put a google search form on your site. Just copy the drop-down code...or create the input field with your favorite value...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I went to google (first time) typed "google" and the first link seemed informative, so I clicked on it. "404..." Ummm, it was on their own site! Don't they try entering their own name?
Sigh, the state of QA, today.
Try searching for: So long and thanks for all the fish
You get a lot of links to to Douglas Adams sites, and other sites that have put that quote on their "We've Moved!" page.
However, the interesting link is the first one.... Yahoo!
I wonder if this is some kind of comment about many people moving from Yahoo! to Google for their search engine needs.
In fact, I used to be a faithful Yahoo! user until Google came around. Before Google, no search engine could beat humans cataloging web sites. Now, Google does a better job searching than Yahoo!, and you don't get all the other crap that you get on Yahoo!'s page. (If I wanted Britney Spears and Pokemon actions, I'd search for them dammit!)
Quoth the Penguin, "pipe grep more!"
Lets face it folks, no matter what the technologies the engines are having a *tough* time keeping up with the plethora of sites thats out there. A lot of the brick and mortar businesses, mom and pop businesses and companies that provide niche products are just getting online NOW. By the time these engines catch up with the new sites it would be a while.
Lets also take into account that even human edited directories are having a hard time. My vote goes for ODP the only "search engine" that I bother with anymore. They are turning into something that yahoo used to be in the good old stanford days.. a genuine human edited interface for joe-surfer.
Just venting some frustration over people go gaga over a google.
I know how to do that. I used to have a webpage with forms for all my favorite searchengines. But that's not the issue. The issue is that the version of google offered on the google site lacks this feature.
Google is mostly used by expert users. Other users have probably not found their way to the google site yet. So based on that you would expect a site that is tailored to expert users (i.e. lots of nice features such as the before mentioned dropdown menu).
The google site seems to suffer a bit from the fact that it was created by a bunch of unix people. Great on the inside but shockingly primitive on the outside. Of course you have to consider that they are only selling what's on the inside (i.e. their search technology). But even then it would probably only help their cause if they payed some attention to the user interface.
After all, if more people start using google, more portals will consider buying their technology.
Jilles
I don't mean to burst anyone's bubble, but IMHO it won't happen. For AltaVista and InfoSeek, it's *very* unlikely because they have products based on their source code.
For Google, I'm sure it's a matter of pride and self-preservation. The GPL doesn't say anything about using the code, so if it was released, there's nothing stopping another site from using the code exactly as presented.
That's not to say I wouldn't like to see the code either. It would be nice to improve the scalability of GPL'ed search engine packages like ht://Dig. In the meantime, we'll just have to read the papers and reverse-engineer.
-Geoff
Unfortunately google does not support - or NOT operators like altavista. Which is really annoying sometimes :-)
Right now, at 10:30AM CDT, Google is acting very very pokey. I just did a search on "free graphics" and it's taken about 5 minutes to return results.
/. effect? Eeek...
Didn't they expect a
As some comments above have pointed out, the Google Bar is gone. I think it is a nice feature because it gives you an idea to what extent the site is being referenced. For example, when I searched CNN before, I could see that the bar went almost all the way to the right indicating that the site was really popular.
Now, I don't see any mention of why they drop the bar in their "Help" or "FAQ". In fact, they changed the "Help" section to not even explain the meaning of the bar anymore. (Of course... since they dropped the bar).
Really miss the Google bar. Anyone knows the reason behind their decision?
I like the 'I'm feeling lucky' button. :)
Not that it's extremely useful.
'Luckies' like 'slashdot', 'slash dot', 'linux', 'great operating system' and 'free operating system' all bring you to the right place, however
I applaud Google for it's visual simplicity, lack of ads, and query speed, but I still find that it's painfully difficult to use, typically spewing out only irrelevant links if the query isn't riddled with a special search operator every few characters. To try the "new Google" out, I entered a very simple phrase:
... and got hit with 1,202 links, notably Earthquake Information from the USGS, QuakeNet Technologies (a web developer), and a message board with BSP info from Carmack... on Quake 1. Mixed in there was a link to id Software's official website, which unfortunately is virtually devoid of anything beyond Quake 2.
Quake 3 info
So I tried to refine my search. 3, a rather crucial part of the query, was ignored because it was too common. This time I searched for:
Quake +3 info
It did better this time, but only marginally. The first result was a link to Mplayer's Quake 2 News, which despite forcing "3" in the query, was still the wrong sequel. The next was id Software (again), and then there were finally some Quake 3 fan sites, a FAQ, and PlanetQuake, among the links to ChubGam 3-D, which looked like Wolfenstein but on better drugs. Since the "3" was clearly being taken out of the desired context, I went back to refine the search again. I tried:
"Quake +3" info
Again there was a slight improvement, but the results again drifted to crap like Snap.com and something called "Boston chicks" and a site about Shockwave.
I'm not saying Google is crap... it's mainly just too picky and overdependent on a very precise query if its to return very precise results. I'll call it... versatile. But even the decreipt AltaVista returned hundreds of accurate results, at least the 50 first of which were dead-on; all with the original query. AllTheWeb performed similarly.
I think Google could use some work. Sure, it runs Linux and hasn't quite sold out yet, but it's still sorely lacking in the actual searching department. eh.
anyone else notice how the press release uses the trademark symbol and words like 'new technology' so repeatedly? sounds like some wacky real-world business/advertising folks got their hands on the Stanford alum's newest creation... let's hope it can stay virginal and pure...
I love the interface. Type in some keywords hit go! Everything else should be done with technology. Simplicity is the key to technology, 1 button, 1 key, just press/turn and go.
+&x
they have want ads that look like this...
Massage Therapist
We are tense from typing and in need of some gentle hands...
Google is seeking a Massage Therapist to provide massages free of charge to employees. The ideal candidate will be able to provide a full range of massage options ranging from chair to full body massages. Must supply own massage table and corporate references. Help us transform our hard working, tense team back into relaxed, happy Googlers! Google will provide compensation and stock options to the one with the magic touch!
Chef
The Googlers are hungry!!
One of Silicon Valley's hottest and fastest growing internet companies is looking for an experienced Head Chef to manage all aspects of our on site cafeteria. Job responsibilities will include, but not be limited to, hiring and managing a full time kitchen staff, cashiers, and dishwashers. Our site is equipped with a full service kitchen and grill with a cafeteria style serving counter. The Chef of choice should be creative and healthy in planning menus for Googlers craving a meal other than a burger.
The only Chef job with stock options!
get out them cooking pans and you too can retire at age 30.
+&x
On an unrelated topic, does anyone know why they have that Google/Burningman logo in their old logos page? I e-mailed them about it last year, but got no reply. I't love to know if there's a theme camp they do
Remember that three minus one is two these days.
This is really beutiful. I am on my shell account and google just looks spectacular on lynx. It is simple and clean and loads fast. The results seem to be very relevant and of course no adds is nice too! One thing I don't see, and I browsed through the FAQ etc is what you can add to a search to make it more relevant. I know in most browsers you can use use boolean operators. Also I often use + or - to make sure a word shows up or doesnt show up. Does google support these kinds of things? If someone finds some info on it, perhaps post it here. Even without using the extra functions this browser is still very effecient! Way to go google.
Of course when I do want to surf in that manner, I just go to Yahoo, not the wannabees.
Every search engine goes through a phase of being the latest and greatest, each offering new concepts that will make searching "deeper, more accurate, and faster". Yahoo!, AltaVista, MetaCrawler, and Ask Jeeves (I'll exclude Dogpile because it sucks) have all had the spotlight at one time or another, and then made somewhat halfassed attempts to incorporate the better features of other sites into theirs, including Google's page caching feature.
Cached pages are a great idea, however, and as I proposed last week, Slashdot should attempt to use similar technology for a few of those sites that are subjected to "The Slashdot Effect".
For now, Google works pretty well because most search engine tip sites are unaware of it. Soon, those sites will be updated so that workarounds, tricks, and other methods to trick the engine into working for the rabid site promoter will make the results just as inaccurate.
My own thought on how to make a search engine work well is to somehow tie the results to Yahoo!. It would be a raw-text search, which could then be compared to Yahoo!'s anemic directory of sites. As the number of links from a related Yahoo site to a candidate page increases, the candidate's score would decrease.
My $0.02.
--
--
E2 IN2 IE?
90% of the time it's great, but sometimes I want to search for something specific and it doesn't always work. I was looking for references to "E-Business Advisor" (a magazine), and it kept telling me "e is a very common word and so it is ignored" even though I put it in there on purpose!
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Google Linux
Um, there's only ONE line of Javascript, and
that's on the home page, to set the focus
to the search box. JavaScript is not required, nor is it extensively used.
The help page (http://www.google.com/help.html) says that they do support the NOT (-) operator. Google also supports "" for word adjacency (although not for literal text search).
(But it seems they can't cope with selling to non-USA anyway).
Regards, Ralph.
All you had to do was search for "quake 3" with quotes, and you would've been fine.
Has anyone noticed that it shows you the lines that your keywords are actually in instead of just the first few lines of the page? Thats incredibly useful.
Also, looking at the # of times Ph.D appears in their employment page, I'd say these guys are a bunch of acedemics. What normal company would require a Ph.D for any position?
Enter "more evil than satan himself" and select "I'm feeling lucky."
Or you might try her e
Don't bookmark this plain URL:
http://www.google.com/
Use this one instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=
It directly gives you the possibility to
choose the number of hits (10, 30 or 100).
This is a completely honest question: why does slashdot think this search engine is so great? The results are okay, about the same as any other search engine. The interface isn't what I'd call "clean" or "good". It's just barren. I'd be very surprised if the no banner thing lasts.
What's the big deal?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
The other two are Open Directory and Ask Jeeves, which, while a little corny (and annoying at times), tends to bring up the occassional good lead.
So, they may be able to pay the bills with custom corporate search engines, payments from the likes of google.netscape.com, etc. Who knows, it could actually work!
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
Looking at: http://www.google.com/why_use.html and jumping down to the section titled "PageRank Explained" breaks my heart. If I read this correctly, Google will merely send more people to the big sites. Why?
Given Google's method of site ranking the vast majority of people will only go to the big sites. Because Google's results are based on the number of links to a page combined with the importance of the linking pages, you'll see pages with lots of links to them always appearing at the top of the results. Now, who has the most number of links pointing to them? Primarily sites run by big businesses or professional organizations. Given that most traffic is increasingly centralized on a smaller number of web sites I find this disturbing.
Now given that the vast majority of people never bother going to a second page of search results (see www.useit.com), google will drive users to the big (important) sites. That a site may have the specific information I need and a big, important site *might* have the information means little to google. It will send me to the page with the most links to it.
Now, I may be reading this all wrong, but this doesn't seem to be helping out the smaller, specialized and niche sites. It only helps the big sites get bigger.
Given that, I do think Google has its place. I think it is important to have several search engines using a variety of means to search information. Too bad they can't all work together to narrow information through using each other's strengths.
YMMV
Methinks you found a true easter egg. Google rocks!
I would think that since everyone's seen the humorous IBM commercial, that they would make sure that they have the capacity to deal with a glut of launch-day visitors. Oh well.
Google user, though I prefer Northern Light and Altavista,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I'm happy to report that the problem has been fixed.
Pretty cool.
anybody cocky enough to throw up an "I'm Feeling Lucky..." button (and IT WORKS 9/10 times!), is good people in my book. Google is my first (and generally my last) choice! I don't mind the ads so much as long as the accuracy of the engine is maintained. It is true though, use the right tool for the job.
Prepare to meet your doom, Starchild!
Cool. Finally a search engine that lists our site at the top of the list, and I haven't even 'submitted' it yet!
Previous search engines find a mention on the Gnome main page and list it about 13th, and then our site appears around 43rd if at all!
Sounds stupid, but you'd think if you typed in 'screem' it should be able to find 'screem.org' somewhere near the top. Google did it first time. Sooooo cool!
The web - it's a wonder it would work!
insignificant sig
http://google.com/search will work just fine, no need for the "?q=", easier to remember too.
Shut up do you know how these servers and connections cost ? Nobody is doing anything for free.
http://www.google.com/unclesam has the drop down.
After seeing their press release last night, I wrote in with some questions. However, now that they are /.ed, I'm a lot less likely to get a reply so anyone here want to comment on this?
:) Do you have a paper out somewhere?
/. moderates comments. I'm planning a voting system that will be built into my web crawler and also interface with winamp and other popular players, so you don't have to do anything special. Each person is connected in a graph to other people who have voted for the same music.
/. is that it serves as a public record to those who would try to patent it)
> First, let me say I've been using google for a while now and I really like the results it produce. I noticed you changed your pages today and included a press release which contain information about patents you are seeking :
"Google's PageRankTM technology performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages that is calculated by solving an equation of 500 million variables and more than 2 billion terms. Google does not determine results by counting links. Instead, Google's PageRank uses the vast link structure of the web as an organizational tool. In essence, Google interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote by Page A for Page B. "
Coming from a computer graphics background, this technique sounds similar to
integrating radiosity form factors. Here, the surface of a world is covered with "patches."
Each patch reflects/emits light and/or heat. Because each patch can possibly reflect energy to
every other patch (directly or indirectly) in the solution it becomes nearly the same problem as you have solved.
Instead of using light energy, you substitute "human interest." Obviously you have to have some energy in the system initially before it can propagate. Do you give each site a constant energy and or do use popular hand-picked directories like yahoo?
In the CG world, progressive refinement methods can be done in stages with a time complexity of O(n) that quickly approach their photo-realistic limit in a few iterations.. There are many papers in the ACM SigGraph proceedings over the years regarding this topic, but I'm sure you are well versed in the area of iterative solutions to large linear equation systems. I'm am curious what methods you use? What is 1 unit of "human interest?" I assume you do not attempt to find a perfect solution, what error tolarance do you set? How long does a run take? etc, etc.
------
I am starting to use a similar technique for MP3 "group filtering," somewhat akin to how
Music is identified by a music "finger print." The finger prints are calculated by averaging frequency components over the first several non-empty frames of an MP3. This means music can be accurately identified even when encoded with different encoders and at different sample rates (regardless of filename). Time shifting effects introduced by different starting positions become less troublesome because of the averaging.
The result is that you have a personal web crawler that can identify a song after a small portion has been downloaded. If the song is past a threshold of tolerance it won't be downloaded and you can optimize for your taste, bandwidth, and available disk space.
(one reason to post ideas on
-- Virtual Windows Project
Alexa (ww.alexa.com) is one site that caches pages. On the bar, the cached button lights up when you hit a page that is contained in their archive. Hit the button and you get the old version of the page.
Alexa (www.alexa.com) is one site that caches pages. On their toolbar, the cached button lights up when you hit a page that is contained in their archive. Hit the button and you get the old version of the page.
The stopwords in Google! searches are my only quibble. If a phrase is inside double quotes you shouldn't have to add a plus so that the stopword will be included. That should be assumed since that is why you use double quotes to begin with!
Still, for my method of searching, you can't come close to matching Google!. It saves time that I would waste looking through zillions of hits on most of the other search engines. I'll keep using it even if they add ad banners.
Your URL: http://A-Z-Internet.com/ has been successfully added to our list of urls to crawl. Note that it may be several months before our next crawl so please be patient.
and you can't even search it for something simple like "U.A.E.".
AltaVista started out as a technology demonstration for digital machines, without banner ads. Once it became popular enough, however, they added the banner ads, too. I'll take every bet that Google is going to run banner ads.
Generally, people link to other sites that have more detailed and definitive information. This isn't necessarily site run by a big company. By sorting by the number of links, you are more likely to find the primary source and not have to wade through all the derivitives.
Does anybody feel that another search engine does better (other than in terms of coverage) than google? Why doesn't the other guys learn?
Maybe a good thing to explain is what happens when 2 people use the same method, and one of them patents it(after the other has used the same idea), what happens to the second guy?
(original point stands, Pagerank isn't the only way, and not nec. the best way to do this...)
Come to think of it, the search is poorly implemented. Typing in a "?" query results in four DNS lookups and redirects, by my count: first keyword.netscape.com, then search..., then info..., and finally google.netscape.com; then before the page draws you must wait for the top ad banner lookups as well.
Netscape would do well to rethink some of their basic user interface functionality from the actual user's point of view.
(sorry this turned into a rant!)
Jeez, have you even used google.com on a regular basis? It's absolutely excellent for taking me to the right site, the first time, or at least on the first page. It's not bad about 'driving' people into a major commercial site they would rather not go to. I mean, if people search for 'Ford Taurus' on google, the first result is a "fan page" for the Taurus...#2 result is www.ford.com.
I adjusted the url you gave to work on australias altavista site (altavista.yellowpages.com.au) and it shows you what other people are searching for?! try shift-refreshing and few times .. interesting :) http://altavista.yellowpages.com.au/cgi-bin/query? text
Yes, Google is fast at finding sites that other people think are important. Usually I find that these sites really are what I'm looking for (and google is often more useful than even my own bookmarks).
But on the other hand it's important to remember that there are times when you want to find things that are obscure and still relatively "undiscovered". Sticking together a boolean query using altavista's "advanced" search is still the best solution for problems like this, as far as I know.
If everyone got in the habit of checking google first, it'll get awfully hard for new sites to get established.
My recommendation: if you're looking for something fast, try google first.
If you're writing a webpage on a certain subject, and you want to add a listing of related links, use altavista first.
(And what's going to happen when it sinks in that the act of creating a link is effectively a vote to rank a site higher? There's going to be an explosion of some fairly mindless link-farming...)