I recently mentioned a presentation that Liz Lawley gave in Atlanta, where she made the case that the "Google Juice" that her blogging had generated has been especially helpful in her career. She demonstrated that juice by typing "Liz" into Google search, and in real time, demonstrated that she is the third result, trailing only Liz Claiborne and Liz Phair. I recently reported on the same exercise with "Stowe," where I turn out to be the number 1 human on the list.

I was interested to see that my friend and colleague danah boyd and I are among the top ten in the "Boyd" search at Google. danah was third the first time, but now (15 minutes later) comes up first at apohenia and fourth at www.danah.org! And I slink in as fifth at Get Real, following danah, Billy Boyd (the actor), Congressman Allen Boyd, and Stanford's Stephen Boyd.

I agree with Liz - in the blogosphere, Google Juice is about people 'voting' on your relevance to the issues you have decided to wrestle with, and represents the degree to which you'd be missed if you stopped blogging. As an end in itself, it is a 21st century parlor trick, but as an indicator of the karma that bloggers have built up, by crafting posts that make people think, link, and comment, Google Juice means something important.