SourceWatch:Publicity

How to Aid in SourceWatch's Publicity
Anyone can, without a major effort, help to publicize SourceWatch.

One of the easiest, and most effective ways to publicize a website is to simply link to the site from other sites. This is possible even if you do not have administrative control over the content of any website. Just the act of mentioning SourceWatch (including a link to it) on public forums, boards or groups, helps to publicise it.

If you feel that SourceWatch is deserving of publicity, post that thought on public websites, along with a link; either upon your own personal space, or on forums and boards that you post on. It adds up, and can act in a synergistic fashion.

Also, if you are actively working with any web project that includes links, insert links to SourceWatch into it. There are many of these projects, but the most famous, and probably the largest is the Open Directory Project. If you ever use links provided by the Open Directory Project and you believe that an important link is missing from a category, always submit it. It is quick and painless.

Another effective way to publicize SourceWatch is practicing proper citing methodology when using information acquired from it. This is the ethical and scholastically accepted method too.

Links are especially important as long as Google with its Page Ranking algorithms is the premier websurfers' choice of a search vehicle. For its ranking of pages in its web search results, the heaviest weighted factor that google uses is how many other links point to it on the internet, but inherent within their software-coded ranking system implementation is a second layer of weighted factoring, this one references the quality of the sites where the link originates.

Confused? Sorry. Think of google as a major source of web magick, and pagerank as google juju. When sites with a lot of google juju link to another site, that site is the recipient of google juju from it, and its juju increases, marginally. Highest page ranked sites tend to be sites with a large amount of content, which people on the web often use as an authoritarian source of information. For technology corporations' sites, Microsoft, Adobe, Dell, etc. are going to be holders of high page rank. Large news media outlets which keep a large amount of their data readily available online are the high ranked ones. (ie CNN, Washington Post, etc.) Large News Media outlets that desire to charge for most of their older content will not see their page rank increase to the highest levels. Obviously, they will have fewer active links to their website.

All search engines use a form of page ranking, the underlying algorhythms that provide the ranking methodology is wherein lay the difference. Another well-known and obvious page ranking system commonly used as tool for web searching is Alexa

Once again, for emphasis; a simple and effective way for everyone to help publicize SourceWatch is to spread the word about it, especially in any electronically formatted content.