Yes, Google downgrade aside, this blog continues to fare well.

Thanks to Noel Bautista for the mention in this interesting post on the whole issue. But the article also highlights an important aspect for bootstrapping on the Net.

Despite all the muttering in many quarters, the Google PR downgrade may not be all that important for building traffic, ultimately the most important goal for those hoping to profit from a website either through advertising or on line sales.

Over this month not only did this site's rank stay fairly buoyant (see Noel's post) but the blog also:
• gained traffic (9552 this month vs. 6556 last month),
• gained page views (15680 this month vs.12492 last month)
• gained Technorati inbound links (130 this month vs. 98 last month

Why? Bootstrapping. Instead of focusing only on PageRank, I've also been aggressive with social networks, the most successful in terms of referrals being MyBlogLog.

Others where BootStrapMe has a presence include MySpace, a Yahoo! Group, the Bootstrap Network and, of course, Technorati.

I discovered by accident what trends now indicate, that social networks are gaining ground on the search engines.

The power of social networks to drive traffic is a major focus in our own bootstrapping venture PostRanger.com.

Come on by, have a look at how it works and say goodbye to Google supremacy. The future is here. Let's bootstrap the Net!