Are local history society web rankings a three card trick or lucky dip?
What seems an age ago, I started to compile a list of ‘top’ local history websites in the United Kingdom according to Google, the premier online search engine, in groups of ten. If the list had remained static then I would now be telling you about those societies which are ranked 41st to 50th, but, of course, it doesn’t work that way. Why? The answer is that Google’s rankings are always changing because of the way their software ‘crawls’ the Internet looking for changes in all manner of things, including links and postings. The list of top online local history related societies in this report uses a Google list I compiled on 10 February 2009 and has one new feature. After the name of each society, I show their [ranking]. If you compare this list and previous ones with Google after reading this report, you will see changes, some quite dramatic. After compiling five lists over the last ten months I have decided to change the focus of my next report to online local history forums and disc
