ranking

Everybody likes contributing an opinion, especially in subjects on which we consider ourselves experts. Rank'em (located at gorankem.com), now in beta testing, uses this human urge as the basis for a crowdsourced song recommendation engine.

This obviously wouldn't work without some structure--asking users to pick their 10 favorite songs at random, for instance, would be too scattershot and yield useless results. So Rank'em has users select particular artists, then asks them to choose between 5 and 20 songs and rank them in order. Users must also rate their level of enthusiasm--or "fanstanding" as the … Read more

Traffic Travis provides a simple set of tools for monitoring the popularity and potential viewings for a particular Web site. With great instructions and an easy layout, this is a fantastic Internet research tool.

The program's interface is impressively professional, with top-notch graphic design, intuitive navigation, and helpful tutorial videos that clarify every point. Traffic Travis provides four distinct functions that allow you to collect data and do research on your selected Web site. The first one searches for popular keywords and competition, and another shows your site's ranking amongst the top four search engines. Yet another tracks … Read more

New start-up Factery Labs is launching its first service on Tuesday, a technology called FactRank that can tear through Web pages and collect what it calls "facts." These are bits of information from each source page that Factery Labs' algorithm then organizes into an order of importance.

What this means for you is that developers will soon make use of the technology in third-party search engines or on Web pages to very quickly deliver reading summaries. This cuts out most (or all) of the parts you don't care about, while organizing the bits you might. It also … Read more

The key to attracting traffic to your Web site is a high ranking by the major search engines, which deliver more hits than any other means. Attracting the attention of search sites usually means paying a consultant or other outside expert for the service. Fortunately, there's a less expensive option: SEO Administrator by FlamingoSoft. It can help get your Web site noticed. It's a search engine optimization (SEO) package that provides all the tools you need to optimize your Web site for maximum visibility and traffic. Its ranking monitoring tool checks major search engines and displays the most … Read more

Once again on this edition of the Top 5 video, we count down the highest-rated products of the past three months. Watch to find out which of the blistering summer releases was rated the highest by CNET editors. There's some stiff competition out there, and some big surprises.

Also remember to post an answer to the trivia question below for a chance to win the retro CNET thumb drive.--so retro it's less than a gigabyte in capacity. It is called "lame prize" after all.

Update: Many below have guessed "Sony PS3 Slim" as … Read more

Pikker is a program designed to help users navigate the stock market by simulating stock trades. This isn't a program for those new to trading, though, as it requires just as much knowledge as the real thing.

This program is as complex as reading a stock ticker. There are a world of terms, abbreviations, and fields that need to be meticulously entered to get a strong picture of your proposed trade. By entering trade allocation info, price, commissions, long rules, short rules, and more, a user can replicate an actual trade. This flexibility and freedom will appeal to those … Read more

As its name suggests, SitePopularity is a program that allows users to check a specific Web site's ranking using top ranking systems. It comes with two trial restrictions, but we found that it still managed to perform well during our tests.

The user interface is extremely easy to navigate. Large, self-explanatory command buttons reside at the top of the window, and URLs are listed in the main window, along with their ranking among such ranking sites as Google Pagerank, Alexa Traffic Rank, and Altavista. Novices will especially appreciate the wizard that walks you through the process of entering the … Read more

Google has penalized the clout that its own Japanese site has in search results after a promotion that violated the company's own search policies.

Earlier this week, Google canceled a promotion in Japan that paid bloggers to write about a new feature that showed popular new search terms on Google's Japanese home page. Now Google is administering the same punishment to its Japanese site that it hands out to others who similarly violate its policies.

"Google.co.jp PageRank is now ~5 instead of ~9. I expect that to remain for a while," said Matt Cutts, … Read more

The question which brands are the best at “socializing” with their audiences is often asked, but rarely answered. Now Vitrue, a social media advertising solutions company, has attempted to capture a snapshot by releasing a Top Social Brands of 2008 list. The ranking is based on the Social Media Index (SMI), a measurement system the company launched to help track brands' share of voice on the social web. The Top 100, which range from the iPhone, CNN, and Disney at the top of the list, to Jet Blue, Puma, and Sears at the bottom of the list, were drawn from … Read more