There has been quite a bit of discussion in SEO circles following on the release of Google sitemaps a couple of months ago.
For CMS and blogging platforms there are plugins that aid in the automatic creation of the sitemap and I use it on this site, however it does not cover the areas of the site outside my blog, so the rest of the site is not even mentioned.
Roy Schestowitz has posted an interesting critique of the concept over on his blog and I must admit he does have some very good points (I would have place a comment there, but his captcha code is broken)
Likening Google to Microsoft he does not see any malevolence, but he has highlighted an important trend:

The phenomenon above is the introduction and absorbance of new technologies by force. Google are forcing, not malevolently though, trends of crawling and push for methods to change

If Google do it, then the others may be forced to follow or die.

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I found a couple of interesting references to the Irish Blogs topsite/list I launched the other day via technorati
Some people are very positive about my latest little project, whereas others seem to think it a waste of time
Youngirelander seems to be missing the point entirely. Nobody ever said it was intended to be a list of every single Irish blog and nobody is going to lay any doubt on how popular some blogs maybe.
If you don’t have the tracking code how is anybody meant to know how popular your blog is?
There is no universal way to rank any website’s popularity using a uniform third party system.
Alexa, for example, can give some information, but it is restricted to reporting information reported by users of their plugin.
Maybe some of us seem to have a fixation with Google PR, technorati and other things, but that might be because we work in an industry where those things count.
If you aren’t interested in them and don’t want your site listed then nobody is going to force you.
As I’ve already pointed out the toplist cannot track certain things at present, such as RSS feeds.
Does that render it worthless? I don’t think so, but you are entitled to your own opinion.
I think my original post announcing the site explains why I set it up.

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Sed tincidunt.
Look familiar?

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If you are fond of the Darwin Awards, then you’ll probably enjoy this site as well

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Software patents can be problematic and Google seems to be adding to the problem with their patent application for “syndicated content”:

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This FAQ is a work in progress and will be updated as I receive queries via comments or email. If you have a question about anything please ask.

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As a couple of people contacted me about this already this morning I thought I’d better clarify a couple of things.
Sites are ranked according to popularity ie. number of visitors etc., NOT votes, so getting all your friends to vote for you won’t have much influence
You need to place a snippet of HTML on your blog so that the system can track the number of visits to your site.
If you look at the bottom top right of my blog’s main page you should see a small image which links through to Irishblogs.info. It updates in realtime ie. the more popular your blog is then you should see the number changing.
People reading your blog via RSS will not be counted as the image counter is not in the RSS feed.
If you have any other questions please let me know

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There seem to be an ever growing number of Irish blogs judging by the two main aggregators; POTB and IrishBlogs.
But does anyone know how popular the blogs are?

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If you are using Google adwords for your business and you are not based in the Irish republic you can now claim back your VAT from Google.

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Even though I only made a modified version of the adsense plugin available a couple of days ago it has already been superceded!!

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