taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Web: Back in 2002, it occurred to someone to check the Google search results for ‘http’, to figure out what the most popular sites were.

Looks like it’s changed — here’s the top five results from a Google search for ‘http’ now:

• 1: Microsoft
• 2: AltaVista (!!)
• 3: Yahoo!
• 4: My Excite
• 5: Google

My guess: older links are getting good PageRank, using whatever new tweaked algorithm they’re using. But AltaVista beating Google? ;)

Tags: altavista, excite, google, http, looks, microsoft, pagerank, search, someone, web, yahoo

similar to the much-discussed-elsewhere http search trick, which figures out the top 100 websites according to PageRank, here’s the top 100 CGI scripts according to PageRank. They’re incomplete, since only scripts with “cgi-bin” in the URL will show up, but hey ho. The top ten:

• 10 : The SEC’s EDGAR archives

• 9 : RIPE Whois

• 8 : The c2.com WikiWikiWeb

• 7 : UCSD Webster gateway

• 6 : Altavista

• 5 : US census lookup (ahead of Altavista, how the mighty have fallen!), and their population clock

• 4 : Internic’s Whois

• 3 : OAndA’s currency converter (a classic)

• 2 : The Babelfish

And the winner is:

• 1 : Search Verisign Whois records

boo.

Tags: altavista, cgi, http, pagerank, ripe, search, sec, trick, url, whois