launching a wiki ...
we are in 'soft launch' mode for our MBA Admissions Wiki. We have asked about 50 people (from the MBA applicant community) to 'test drive' the wiki and add some content. Based on their feedback we have reworked some of the format and text. We are now doing final changes with some new 'testers' and have also started linking it to the Clear Admit MBA admissions blog (left hand column, under the header 'Interview Reports').

I am hoping we can do a somewhat official launch over the next week or so. Timing is a bit of a concern as it is obvious a holiday period, but I am anxious to roll this out.

Search Engine Experiments.
I have been using a couple of search engine experiments with my students to see how search engines work. The experiment results, thus far are here and here.

The Kidscorner experiment, which has only run for a couple of weeks, has allowed us to push my sister's web-site from 11 to 1 with the keyword phrase 'outdoor trampolines chester', in google.

The nworbxela experiment was designed to see if we could get all our class blogs listed and also determine the best means to get the higher rankings. For google it seems including the keyword in the title and the URL is critical. There was an odd result in MSN, which included a site that does not include the keyword. The explanation seems to be due to the sites that do include the keyword, all point to this site. No other sites point to this site (or at least the ratio of sites that do point to this site that include the keyword is very high.)

Any insights appreciated.