We've been sunrocket subscribers for about a year. In case you're not familiar with them, Sunrocket is a VOIP provider similar to Vonage. They offered us a great deal that worked about to about $15/month for unlimited long distance. The service had been working wonderfully for us. Perhaps too well, as a couple of days ago I received email notification from sunrocket's customer service department indicating that sunrocket would be ceasing business operations. "Dear customers," the email stated, "SunRocket is in the process of closing its operations and therefore will no longer be able to provide you with the phone service that you have been accustomed to." Thankfully, we can transfer our service to one of several alternate providers.

I wonder if Sunrocket's woes are due to poor business decisions such as a perhaps too generous welcome package for new subscribers, or to the threat of lawsuit gathering on the horizon.

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Yesterday I summed up what I know about google for a fellow that runs an ecommerce site. Today, I'm putting those same thoughts down here:

• Perhaps the most important factor in your site's page ranking is content. Google says that it uses your page's content as well as the content of neighboring pages to determine if your site is relevant to a particular search term. I read this as a directive to specialize,
  specialize, specialize. If you want to appear at the top of the search when someone performs a search for "wooden model P41" then not only should your site have lots of text about wooden models and P41s but any digression into alternative topics such as italian politics or if the simpsons movie will be a hit will drive down your rank.



• Also very important is who links to your site and who you link to. Says google: "google considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value." This is a really complex topic and a lot is said about it. I like what these folks have said as it seems clearer than most.



• Metatag content does not affect search ranking. It may govern what text appears adjacent to the link in google' search results.



• Google has a supplemental index dead zone into which your site will fall if google thinks that your site has excessive duplicate content, too many variables in the URL, "includes excessive reciprocal links", "links to spammy neighborhoods" or engages in "link buying/selling.". Sites on the supplemental index are not scanned as frequently by google for updates and are searched after the primary index guarenteeing that your site will not have a high page ranking.