Last week I did a tech post on the mind numbingly dull topic of 301 redirects. The message was loud and clear. If you make sure that all links from http://yourdomain.com are redirected to http://www.yourdomain.com, you could seriously improve your chances of being found by those pesky search engines.

After mucking about with redirects, lo and behold, one week later thepisstakers have meteored from the 72% "quartile" to the top 82% slot in the internet heirarchy. Woo hoo. In other words, of the 100 million blogs online, there are only 18 million pulling more traffic, generating more backlinks and spreading better material than me!

Well, interestingly, this rise in "authority" coincides with a slight drop in traffic and a stagnating Technorati rank! Go figure.

Not saying that stats aren't interesting, encouraging and entertaining, but really, what are they worth in the real world? When I started about a year ago, I thought it was best to assume that the internet stats scene isn't the real world, and stats are a gamers' paradise where up is down and good is bad. Unfortunately, many advertisers and opportunist money makers have promoted the internet until it has become its own real world organic eco-system of 0's and 1's, and online stats are very important and highly reflective of the true state of websites published on the web. So people like me need to get over it already and play the game.

I guess I just need to re-jig my brain to "virtual" mode and live by the numbers rather than judge the true entertainment value of the content before my eyes. I need to realise that lists are good, and 7 How To do things lists are stellar; copied and pasted lists are gold, and saying Hi, thanks for the add is a basic building block to fame and fortune in the top 10.

With those simple concepts fixed in my mind I can blog in peace, and maybe one day, I will even understand what all the stats mean and learn how to interpret them and even profit from them.

Have a good day. (In internet terms, I think that really means you will have a bad day at work, but when you get home, you will discover a hot new link train on a I had a bad day at work type of blog?)

Where do you rank according to the Website grader?