Webfuse has always been based on the premise of open content, where ever possible.

On of the reasons for that is so that it can raise the profile of the organisation by our good content bringing people to CQU.

While teaching COIS20025 in the second half of 2006 I googled “entity relationship diagram”.

Imagine my surprise when the #1 hit was, and still is, an old Webfuse course site. Or at least a page on it.

This was a page from a course offered in the 2nd half of 2000. It’s 6 years old.

The content is good, I’ve used it again. That’s why it’s a top hit.

The Experiment

The plan is

  • Modify the page to point to a more recent page which containts some of the same content that has been reworked.
  • Observe whether or not the new page can climb the Google rankings.

The, very simple, measure I’m using is a simple Perl script that

  • Grabs the first 1000 Google responses to a search for “entity relationship diagram”
  • Lists all the URLs in that first 1000 that are in the cqu.edu.au domain.

I plan to run that script at regular periods over the next few months. I’ll modify the following list each time I run it.

Results

  • 19 September, 2006
    Only 1 CQU domain page. The original page, ranked number 1.
  • 3 October, 2006
    Only 1 CQU domain page. The PDF document ranked as number 205 in the google list. The original page has dropped out entirely.

    I’m going to add a link from my personal website, which because of various reasons, I believe might be seen to be reasonably influential (in the broadest possible sense of the term). Just to see if it makes any difference.

  • 11 October, 2006
    Three links from the CQU domain

    1. #4 The original document
    2. #233 The updated document
    3. #950 An online book from the old infocom site
  • 16 October, 2006
    Looks like the new link is on the move up. Two links from the CQU domain

    1. #5 The original document
    2. #214 The updated document
  • 24 October, 2006
    Only one link at CQU reported. #68 – The updated document
  • 31 October, 2006
    Original link is back showing up at #4 and the new link is back to #200.
  • 12 January, 2007
    2: http://www.infocom.cqu.edu.au/Courses/spr2000/95169/Extra_Examples/ERD.htm
    50: http://webfuse.cqu.edu.au/Courses/2006/T2/COIS20025/Assessment/Item_2/Part_A_Resources/erd.pdf
    423: http://www.infocom.cqu.edu.au/HNI/BooksOnline/chapter_09.pdf
    673: http://www.infocom.cqu.edu.au/HNI/BooksOnline/chapter_09.pdf
  • 24 January, 2007
    A couple of days ago I received an email from a Canadian professor asking to use these documents in his course.

    The results of the Google search stand at

  • 26 June, 2007