How Google ranks blogs and debugging GA – The Monday Aug 30th Roundup

Summer, its oooooovvvveeeerrrrr. The weather is cooling off, the clouds are coming, and soon I’ll have to go shopping for raincoats, or else buy a bus pass.

In the blog world we have loads of stories from across the spectrum, including how Google ranks blogs, debugging GA tags, and hacking quantum cryptography with lasers.

• We start the week with Bill Slawski over at SEO by the Sea, talking about how Google may rank blogs. Interestingly this patent seems focused on how to rank blogs, instead of blog posts.
• Next up, Huo Mah on Google’s new social gaming strategy (yes, you heard that right). If you haven’t been following it, Eric Schmidt has invested over 2 mil in social gaming, Google has bought Slide, Jambool, and invested in ngmoco, while developing a social media platform known as “Google Me”.

• Google has confirmed GPU acceleration in Chrome 7, making GPU use three for three now amongst the major browsers. Their implementation is interesting though, actually splitting page elements, breaking them down, then handing them off to the GPU.
• Next up, something slightly less related to our standard technology section, but simply too cool to pass up: hackers have found a way to crack quantum cryptographic systems while leaving no sign of a hack. And they do it with lasers. Using lasers to hack quantum cryptography, this is total geek candy.

• In another one of their quick analytics tips, the GA blog has posted a demonstration of just how easy it is to create segments based on intelligence alerts. Basic, but useful.
• Immeria is slightly more informative, expanding on Google’s announcement of its debug tool with their own “how do you debug your Google Analytics tags?”

• UX Matters has more on personas with this weeks “explorations in developing a deep and dimensioned character“.
• Our friends over at Unbounce have posted an interview with Roberta Rosenberg of Copyblogger, talking about topics ranging from writing headlines to editing pages themselves.

• With all my ranting about spam on Twitter and Facebook it’s surprising that I almost missed this Lifehacker post: How to Avoid Friend Spam on Facebook.
• The Arcade Fire have released a new video entirely in HTML5. You need Chrome for it, but its worth it. Its amazing.