Visit the city of Bayport’s Web site and you will see colorful foliage and a couple strolling alongside a rustic fence.

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4Domains Launches 4WebMonitoring.com and 4OnlineBackup.com; Web … Domain informer, IL -May 30, 2008 4Domains.com's product offerings include: bulk domain name registrations, domain auction, web hosting, reseller plans, expired domain names, dns tools, …

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Gregory's Online Business Blog About - News & Issues, NY -4 hours ago If you're paying 10 bucks or less for Web hosting and wondering why your website is so darn slow, it may be time to upgrade your Web hosting package. …

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Web Hosting Mergers and Acquisitions - April 2008 Web Host Industry Review -21 hours ago Dublin, Ireland - Digiweb, has acquired web hosting Novara, as well as its host.ie and register.ie brands. Digiweb serves 22000 hosting customers, …

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Wouldn't it be great to understand exactly how Google decides to rank websites? And wouldn't it be even better if the information on Google search rankings came from a true ''insider'' at Google? Well if the Google blog is to be believed, the company has begun an effort to do just that. Udi Manber, a Vice President of Engineering at Google is part of the team called 'Search Quality'. Search Quality is the name of the team responsible for the ranking of Google search results. That is, when you type a search query into the search box at Google and hit enter, the Search Quality team is responsible to decide within a fraction of a second which among the billions of pages on the web to display, and in what order.

So according to this post in the Official Google Blog, the company has decided to share more information with those outside Google about exactly how its search rankings are determined. As anyone who has tried to get a website ranked at Google for any relatively popular term can tell you, the exact process of how Google ranks pages has been intentionally shrouded in mystery since the company was founded. However, in the blog post Mr. Manber declares, ''But being completely secretive isn't ideal, and this blog post is part of a renewed effort to open up a bit more than we have in the past. We will try to periodically tell you about new things, explain old things, give advice, spread news, and engage in conversations. Let me start with some general pieces of information about our group. More blog posts will follow.''

The rest of the piece doesn't reveal anything particularly new about the ranking process.

So why on earth would Google be telling us about how rankings are formulated? And why do it now? What is to be gained?

Perhaps as the company has become nearly monopolistic in search, there is added pressure to assure the outside world that the search results are truly independent of any internal manipulation. It's no secret that a top Google ranking for a highly trafficked term, for instance ''web hosting'', is worth thousands of dollars per day. There is also the prestige and brand equity that comes with a number one ranking at Google.

So how do we know that Google's ranking system is ''fair''?

We don't. For all we know, influential insiders at Google have sent around an internal memo that reads in part, ''When in doubt, just put the Wikipedia entry for the search term at the top of the results…''. Of course that's not what would lead to the most relevant search results, but then again the search industry is completely unregulated. If Google wanted to, they could rank www.thewhir.com as the number one result for ''web hosting''. So why don't they?

Perhaps Mr. Manber's next blog post will shed some light on that subject.

This content appears courtesy of HostMySite.com.

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April was a bit more active than March. I am getting some good "vibes" pre HostingCon and ISPCON was better than expected. My firm closed a couple of transactions which is always nice. So here we go…

Laguna Niguel, CA — Alentus Corporation (ALNS) acquired Austin, Texas-based Website Source, Inc. (Shared) and SpeedFox, Inc. (Dedicated).  The deals add $2.6M in annual revenue to Alentus. Tom Millitzer President of NCC-New Commerce Communications (This blogger) represented Website Source and Speedfox in the transactions.

Dublin, Ireland - Digiweb, has acquired web hosting Novara, as well as its host.ie and register.ie brands. Digiweb serves 22,000 hosting customers, 32,000 broadband customers and has 140 Employees.

Boston, MA - ABRY Partners acquired Raleigh, NC based Hosted Solutions for $140 million. Hosted Solutions has several East Coast data centers and provides managed services. Paul Stapleton of DH Capital represented Hosted Solutions in the transaction.

Scottsdale, AZ - Vilocity Interactive Inc. recently expanded its client roster and presence on the East Coast with the acquisition of a Boston-based WebNesting a hosting and site development firm.

San Mateo, CA – SAS provider Etelos, Inc.   (Public, OTC: ETLO) completed reverse merger into Tripath Technology. Company has a market cap of $210 million.

Nottinghamshire UK - Timico Group acquired Twang.net Limited, a UK-based a specialist in fully managed solutions.

Renton, WA - Parallels, has acquired ModernGigabyte, the ModernBill automated billing system and other hosting automation solutions. ModernGigabyte provides software to nearly 15,000 hosting resellers with more than 2 million customers worldwide.

Plano, TX - Layered Technologies, Inc., acquired of FastServers.net, a Chicago-based managed hosting company. I ran into FastServers founder Ian Andrusyk at ISPCON…he was very relaxed.

Mississauga, ON - Hostopia (TSX: H) acquired the customer assets of Web hosting provider Luxomovera, operating as uplinkearth.com. Reportedly an all-cash offer that will migrate some 12,500 customers Hostopia's facilities.

Fairfax, VA - mindSHIFT Technologies acquired Collaboration Online, better known as groupSPARK. Collaboration Online provides Shared & Dedicated Exchange data center and other server side services.

Obviously not all inclusive - but from the NCC files.

More about Tom:

New Commerce Communications

E-Mail Tom Direct

Meet me at Hostingcon and attend my M&A session. 

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