After reading a post by Nelson Minar about Google's Webmaster Tools, I ran on over to Google to see what I could learn about VentureBlog. The setup and verification process for the Webmaster Tools was really simple. After having demonstrated that I was the rightful owner of VentureBlog, I was able to see an interesting analysis of those searches and clicks on Google that point to VentureBlog.

Not surprising, four of the top six Google queries that include links to VentureBlog are "venture capital," "venture," "venture capitalist," and "venture capitalists." The Google tools also tell you the average top link position held by your site for any given search (in other words, what was the highest position held by a link to your site for that search). For all of these "venture capital" related terms, VentureBlog is in the top ten organic links. That makes perfectly good sense to me given my natural tendency to write about Venture Capital. In contrast, however, there is not a single search in my top twenty that includes the term "VC." Not "VC" or "VCs" or "What's a VC" or "Ninja VC" or "Sand Hill VC" or "Tech VC," and certainly not "A VC." Nary a single "VC" search term in the VentureBlog top twenty.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why that is. Admittedly, I don't have "VC" in the title of my blog, like Redeye VC or BeyondVC. But I certainly reference the term "VC" often enough, even occasionally in the titles of my posts. So what's keeping me down? Hopefully as I spend more time looking at the Google Webmaster Tools, I'll be able to better understand the dynamics of page rank.

I thoroughly enjoy writing VentureBlog. As I've said many times before, it gives me the opportunity to engage in a conversation with a really smart community of entrepreneurs. But it also affords me an incredible education. How else would I get an inside view of things like page rank, search dynamics, linking, referral traffic, viral growth, advertising dynamics, etc.? The understanding of each of these elements is invaluable when evaluating Internet businesses and VentureBlog has afforded me a front row seat to the show. I look forward to continuing to use services like Google's Webmaster Tools to make the most of that front row view.

Update: A commenter below writes "Couldn't you be a little less obvious for fucks sake?" Jeesh. Of course I could. In fact, I don't think that I could be any more obvious. That was the whole point. So much for irony.