Bloggers have increasingly come into their own. They weild a power that is directly parallel to the global spread of the Internet. Everyday, more and more people are coming online, only to find the World Wide Web an indispensable fix.
Muslims are certainly no exception. In many ways, the Internet has opened up the intellectual discourse. Where once traditional knowledge was passed from teacher to student, materials like Hadiths and Koranic exegesis are now widely available for online study by virtually anyone. This has of course fueled the idea that the traditional mode of transmitting knowledge is not only clumsy, it is unnecessary.
A lot depends on just what materials are available online, of course, and their individual popularity. The latter is an important consideration since search engines like Google rely on an esoteric formula called Page Ranking. Page Ranking determines which websites appear first in search queries. My blog, for example, is seventh in a search for the terms “Higher Criticism”.
Nobody really knows how Page Ranking operates since Google jealously guards its internal workings. But it’s clear that a content’s Page Ranking is greatly influenced by the number of websites that link to it. Take my blog, for example. Higher Criticism’s rank is relatively modest, and would have been worse if blogs like Mere Muslim or Sunni Sisters had not linked to my blog. It helps that Mere Muslim and Sunni Sisters have Page Rankings that can only be considered “Ridiculously Enormous”. I mean no disrespect because without those blogs’ kindness, Higher Criticism would have remained just a personal diary.
Unfortunately, this process works a little too liberally for some tastebuds. In my line of blogging, certain websites that can only be described as my ideological opposite (aka Salafist) have to be cited. Citations would entail putting up links, and links mean a boost in the OTHER’s page ranking. In fact, an alleged “Islam-basher” like Daniel Pipes might enjoy a high ranking simply because thousands of Muslim blogs link to his articles for the sole purpose of refuting them.
You might think this is unfair, but links are like advertisements, or more accurately referrers. Referrers channel traffic to a particular website that they link to, and traffic is a big factor in Page Ranking. The busier the traffic, the higher the rank. Ultimately, Page Ranking doesn’t particularly care about intentions.
There are workarounds. You could always type out complete URLs without hyperlinking them, like this:
http://www.allahuakbar.net
http://www.alghurabaa.co.uk
http://www.al-manhaj.com
http://www.islam-qa.com
http://muqbil.co.uk
http://www.madeenah.com
http://muttaqun.com
http://www.muwahhideen.com/articles
http://www.salafipublications.com
http://www.thewahhabimyth.com
http://www.troid.org
http://www.fatwa-online.com,
and the most interesting gem in the collection,
http://www.fatwaislam.com/fis/index.cfm?scn=fd&ID=756
The first thing to note is that the URLs are not click-able. Clicks matter because search engines like Google count them. The more clicks, the higher the Page Rank. So if your URLs are not hyperlinked, no traffic is channeled. You cease being a referrer, in other words.
That doesn’t mean you can’t visit the pages I listed above. A simple “copy-and-paste” operation will take your browser there. But Google doesn’t really count those in any meaningful way.
The workaround has its limitations, chief of which is the loss of browsing convenience, and that itself might make you re-consider your blogging strategy.
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