Intense Debate is very similar to Disqus. It can very handle just about any blogging platform and offers a WordPress plugin (highly recommended if your blog is powered by WordPress).

I have began testing Intense Debate yesterday, and not only the name has grown on me, God knows there will be many intense debates on this blog.

So if you you are contemplating trying a third party comment management system, Intense Debate deserves a closer look. If you already have an account with them, feel free to look me up- I would love to connect with you on Intense Debate.

Some of my friends think that Intense Debate can handle better comments that are in hundreds- or in some cases in thousands. I on the other hand am a simple guy- all I need is centralized place for comments from all of my blogs and to never have to be bothered with spam (yeah I know, the second part of my wish will never come true).

The problem is that the cached pages are the pages from the search queries on LeapFish itself. It may be an oversight on the part of LeapFish engineering team, but there is a serious problem with some of those cached pages, just like this one. LeapFish has chosen to display their advertisers links without a “nofollow” attributes.

If it was an oversight on LeapFish’s part they should correct it by disallowing crawlers to access and index their search query URLS.

It might have been done intentionally to increase the number of “indexed pages”, which is ok. However in this case LeapFish engineering team should consider adding “nofollow” attributes to all sponsored links. It might be possible to serve the sponsored links through a JavaScript to avoid passing on the page rank. It is might be much easier to do than developing safety software for neurosurgery equipment.

There is of course a third possibility, based on the fact that LeapFish has been caught astroturfing on TechChrunch. It may have been done intentionally and they may not care much about being penalized for paid links as long as LeapFish can benefit in a short term. In this case every one should feel for their advertisers.

Of course the burning question remains how will LeapFish improve overall user experience on the Internet? Since their query pages are being indexed, down the road you may search Google for something yet end up on one of these LeapFish pages, which in turn will contain search results from Google??? Wow, why didn’t any one come up with this in the past?!!

As I have stated in my original post, I am not quiet sure how will this map be useful to any of the blogs there. But the experiment gave me an opportunity to learn more about Google Maps and actually inspired me to do few things with it for my other projects and websites.

Putting the blogs on the map proved to be a difficult task in some cases, since it was hard to determine the geographical location of the owners of these blogs. Thus number of blogs ended up in the middle of Hudson Bay, Golf of Mexico and some in the Atlantic Ocean. I will list those blogs below and if you are the author of any of them, just leave the name of your city and state (and country if outside of the US) so I can adjust the map accordingly.

Blogs That Ended Up In Hudson Bay

Blogs That Ended Up In The Golf Of Mexico

Blogs That Ended Up In The Atlantic Ocean

Some Of The Maps Statistics
As of posting this article, the map received 2,000+ views. It is hard impossible to know the actual click through to the blogs featured on the map. Only individual owners will be able to know if they have received any visitors from this map. Although the main page (on Google) is already in Google’s index, it is nowhere near the top results for any relative terms.

What is next?

To be honest I am not sure. There is a way to create “mash ups” on Google maps. When you create a a map on Google Maps, your map has an RSS feed where all of your “placemarks” are are stored. The author (and collaborators) can add ad more “places” to the maps they created by simply importing these RSS feeds from other maps. Bellow is an example of mixing an mashing Google Maps- I have combined a “zoomed” view of Seattle, WA featuring the map of top 100 Real Estate Blogs and Jim Reppond’s North Seattle Neighborhoods Map:

If you don’t mind sharing your own Google Map with me, I can import your map to the map of Top 100 Real Estate Blogs- just leave the link to your map int he comments.

As for adding anymore blogs to the map, this has to be put on hold due to my other commitments. However if you know your way around Google Maps feel free to request and become collaborator. The only requirements that I have is that you must be an author of blog that writes about real estate, not to post to map anything illegal and not modify/delete “placemarks” created by other collaborators.

(If the map below is empty try to refresh the page- Google is not cooperating well with me for some reason )

I would like to see this project finished eventually and truly hope that many of you will respond. As it can become something we all can benefit from.

If your blog is listed on my list and you wold like to become collaborator of this project by placing your own blog on the map please indicate so in the comments. Also while commenting please leave your e-mail address to which you would like me to send an invitation to become collaborator of this project.

How can you benefit?

Well, to be honest I don’t really know the full extend of how you can benefit from this project. You may not benefit at all. But it sure can be a fun project!!! This map is “public”, Google says that it will be included in search results and user profiles:

As collaborator, you are free to create and modify your own “placemarks”. And as long as you do not promote anything illegal feel free to “placemark” your active listings, pictures you have taken, restaurants you have been to…. your limited only to your own imagination. As long as you don’t post naked pictures of yourself.

If you are interested in the development of this map you can subscribe to the RSS Feed which should notify you about new additions to the map.

If you like this idea feel free to rate it and give it a star or two (preferably five) .

And of course any suggestion is welcomed so feel free to comment.

New “search engine” LeapFish, a division of DotNext Inc, is selling/leasing their #1 position for the term “Realtor” on eBay:

LeapFish seams to be spending no money on Pay Per Click advertising themselves, according to SpyFu:

But they don’t look shy at all spamming websites like SEOMoz:

In my opinion you can drive more traffic from Google AdWords at that price. What do you think? Would you pay $1000 dollars a month for #1 position at LeapFish???

UPDATE: TechChrunch just wrote an insightful post about LeapFish- well worth reading. Hopefully there will be more lively discussion about LeapFish on TechChruch.

One of such blogs is The Phoenix Real Estate Guy authored by Jay Thomson. From the time I have discovered Jay’s blog, he have made an outstanding progress and is currently maintaining 5th place on my list:

Every blogger accumulates experience while developing their blogs. What makes good blogger an outstanding one is the willigness to share his knowledge with their readers.

Recently, Jay had published a tutorial on link building which I am happy to share below. If you have not yet subscribed to his blog, you might be missing out on some great insights into blogging- so make sure to visit his blog and hit that “Subscribe” button!

After the list was created and announced on Go Beyond MLS, not much work was put into it. In fact the list was not updated (with new additions and rankings) in well over two months. Recently the website was moved to a new web host. While the list is currently disorganized with many blogs showing N/A values for Google PR and Technorati, this will change soon as data is aggregated.

How did these blogs make the list?

While the rankings are aggregated through a script the list of blogs had to be compiled manually. The list started with the real estate blogs I regularly read. Good number of blogs were added from BlogFlux, Carnival of Real Estate, many Blogrolls and user submissions.

Is the list objective?

After the list was created, there was a good amount of criticism as to reliability of the rankings we used. So I guess the list is as objective as the data used. I have to point out that in recent months it has become harder and harder to game Alexa or Technorati. It is also should be pointed out that the list was created to encourage real estate professionals to start a blog. Blogging is not going anywhere any time soon.

Is the list closed to new submissions?

The short answer is no. You can still submit your blog for inclusion by leaving a comment below or by using the contact form. Your blogs has to be about real estate or it will not be added to the list.

I also would like to apologize to anyone who had attempted to submit their blog to the list in the past but your blog is not on the list. There is good chance your request has been lost, partially due to the fact that there was a period of time when I wanted to abandon the list completely. Please resubmit your blog again.

Blog

Blog is the most recent addition to the website. More than anything I look forward to create strong community of readers. Feel free to participate by leaving comments on the posts you find interesting. Constructive criticism is always welcomed, however there will be no tolerance for spam.