Quoth the Raven 13

[Lord Cyclohexane]

Google is nice for the newcomers though. But Google bombs and spamming "Ravenloft Ravenloft Ravenloft!!!" on the frontpage won't work as well with Google as previous search engines.

I agree, putting "Ravenloft Ravenloft Ravenloft!!!" won't help with the search engines at all. That said, I still find it amusing.

But Google Bombing is proven to work, due to the search heuristic that Google uses. When Google scans a webpage (to index the content so that it can be searched for), it takes special note of any links on that page. Google then associates the text of that link with the URL specified. Why? Because that gives Google a better idea of how individuals tend to word things and thus a better idea of how they'll word it when doing a Google search.

Note that the Google Bomb only works if you put the link on somebody *else's* website, though. Putting links here in the forum isn't enough to modify Google's search results. Putting links in every WotC forum page, however, would make a difference, but best is to get links on all different kinds of pages. I mentioned political blogs above, as honestly they're the easiest to hit and there are 80 bajillion of them; make a comment that's even relatively ontopic and you'll ensure that your link stays.

[ScS of the Fraternity]

These are all very good ideas, and it should be no suprize that i've been considering a package of changes to the website to improve its google rating.
Please note, however, thaat there are several main problems.

1) Google ratings require links from other sites. The Kargatane site had many years of solid support from the RPG web to build its list of links. We, on the other hand, started after Ravenloft hit the skids and became just another gloomy WW product.
Less popularity means less people looking to link.

2) A lot - and I mean a lot of non-Ravenloft sites already use the ravenloft keyword. For one, there's some loser band out there running a site from the UK.

We can make some changes to improve the situation, but its probably a losing battle.

[Lord Cyclohexane]

I'm not sure what you've been doing lately, ScS, but it appears to be working. I just checked Google again, and FoS is on the 3rd page again. So whatever you've done, good job and keep it up!

[Kel-nage]

We're on page 2! (And pretty high up on it at that, the 5th link down)

Keep on linking everyone

[Gemathustra]

We're on page 2! (And pretty high up on it at that, the 5th link down)

Keep on linking everyone

And how is this supposed to let the people who contributed to QtR know what they did wrong and or right?