Wordpress Leading the Way… for Google! Or is it?

February 4, 2008

I’ve wondered for awhile what the Link Relationship tab in the Blogroll area was for, but thanks to Marketing Pilgrim, I know now. Apparently, Matt Mullenweg is one of the creators of XFN relationship meta data, and he included it in Wordpress because he can :)

Now, Google has announced that they’re going to start using that data, when available, in their search algorithms. My guess is that right away, it will be used to return the social links when you click “Similar Results” for a site that has this meta data. Chances are, if you like Matt Mullenweg’s blog, you’ll like the blogs by the rest of the wordpress team. And Google will weight those blogs higher because they’re linked to Matt’s.

But that leads me to this problem - as of 2/4/08, Matt has 8 links in his sidebar. 4 aren’t Wordpress related (though a couple are business-esque and one is Joyent’s blog) and the other 4 are matt.wordpress.com (Matt on Not-Wordpress - his personal blog, though he does talk a bit about Wordpress on it), wordpress.com, wordpress.org, and bbPress. If I search for “Wordpress” in Google, the chances of Google finding a relevant page on one of the first four are slim - I checked the front page of all of the links, and found nothing, there could be older posts, though. And the last 4 aren’t really blogs - but I suppose depending on what I was searching for, I could find it in one of those.

And then there’s this: None of the sidebar links on Matt’s blog have XFN Relationship Meta Data! (again, as of 2/4/08) So, am I to believe that this is such a good idea that is big enough to get Google to take advantage of it, but not good enough that one of the creators isn’t even using it? Good luck getting much of anything out of this, Google…

(Note: I’m not bashing Matt for putting what he wants to put in his sidebar. He could have the dancing baby from Ally McBeal there for all I care But it just seems strange to me that Google is so interested in this meta data, and one of the creators isn’t even using it on his blog… Something is missing here)