I thought you might be interested in the enclosed award we won. -- =Jim Eggert EggertJ@crosswinds.net ---------- From: awards@links2go.com Date: Friday, July 7, 2000 5:22 PM Subject: Links2Go "Genealogical Institute" Award The page titled "Soc.Genealogy.German Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)", at <http://german.genealogy.net/gene/faqs/sgg.html>, was selected as a Links2Go "Key Resource" in the Genealogical Institute topic, at <http://www.links2go.com/topic/Genealogical_Institute>. o How your page was selected Each quarter, Links2Go samples millions of web pages to determine which pages are most heavily cited by web pages authors, such as yourself. The most popular pages are downloaded and automatically categorized by topic. At most 50 of the pages related to a topic are selected as "Key Resources." Out of 50 pages selected as Key Resources for the Genealogical Institute topic, your page ranked 49th. For topics like Music, where there are a large number of interested authors and related pages, it is harder to achieve selection as a Key Resource than for a special-interest topic, such as Quantum Physics. The Links2Go Key Resource award differs from other awards in two important ways. First, it is objective. Most awards rely on hand selection by one or more "experts," many of whom have only looked at tens or hundreds of thousands of pages in bestowing their awards. Selection for these awards means no more than that one person, somewhere, noticed your page and liked it enough to select it. The Key Resource award, on the other hand, is based on an analysis of millions of web pages. Any group or organization who conducts a similar analysis will arrive at similar conclusions. When Links2Go says your page is a Key Resource, we mean that your page is one of the most relevant pages related to a particular topic on the web today, using an objective statistical measure applied to an extremely large data set. Second, the Key Resource award is exclusive. We get literally hundreds of people requesting that their page be added to one or more topics per week. All of these requests are denied. The only way to get listed as a Key Resource is to achieve enough popularity for our analysis to select your pages automatically. We do not accept fees, offers of link exchanges, free advertising, or bartered livestock as inducements to add new sites to our lists. Fewer than one page in one thousand will ever be selected as a Key Resource. o Do I need to do anything? You do not need to take any action to qualify for the award. Your page has already been selected and is already listed as a Key Resource. Pages that rank near the top of the list of Key Resources will almost certainly remain Key Resources on subsequent rebuilds of the index. Pages that are ranked near the bottom of the list may be "knocked off" the list or be assigned to different topics on later rebuilds. No action you take, other than steps to increase the popularity of your web pages, will have any effect on future selection. If, however, you wish to display an award graphic on your web page and/or link back to your topic, additional information can be found at <http://www.links2go.com/award/Genealogical_Institute>. This is at your sole discretion. If you choose not to display the award for any reason, it will have no effect on later selection. o If your page has been incorrectly categorized Sometimes, pages are categorized incorrectly, particularly for pages near the bottom of the list for special-interest topics. If your page has been incorrectly categorized, please accept our apologies. As we improve the system and sample more and more pages, such mistakes will be corrected automatically. o If your page has moved to a new address If your page has moved to a new location, changed name, or if you want to remove your page from our index, please visit <http://www.links2go.com/updateurl>. This form will allow you to submit an update request. After your request has been reviewed by our editors, your changes should go live within a few days. o If you are not the author of the page Our software attempts to identify the page author from email addresses on the page. Sometimes, when there are multiple email addresses listed, we grab the wrong address for the page author. Please accept our apologies if this is the case. We would appreciate it if you would forward this email to the appropriate person. o I need to speak to a human If you absolutely must speak to a live person, please send email to marc(at)links2go(dot)com. Note that Marc receives over 100 email messages a day, so there might be considerable lag between your emails and any responses. o Do you have a list? Will I get more email? You will receive only one notification of selection as a Key Resource (this notification). This is the only email you will ever receive from us, unless you contact us and request a reply. We keep a list of email addresses we have contacted so that we _never_ send that address another email message. If you have multiple email addresses listed on different pages, and these pages are each selected as Key Resources, you may receive at most one email per page per address. Once again, congratulations on your award! Links2Go Awards awards@links2go.com