This gadget provides users with the ability to see what’s popular. It works a bit like Digg in that it displays links, titles and a one or two sentence description of popular items of interest. Users can also add URLs to the list displayed on the page.

The great thing about iGoogle for website owners is that you don’t need a login, username or account to vote on the popularity of a website. And as just stated, you can add URLs to the list. That means you can submit your own web pages to be included without any penalty from Google.

Now if you want to submit your URL using your Google account, you can edit the title and description of the page. This is useful because you may be able to create a more interesting description, tap into keywords you know your audience is looking for and tap into needs and desires your target audience has.

Users vote by simply clicking on the up or down arrow to indicate if they agree or disagree with the URLs popularity. And of course they can search, because what’s a Google gadget if you can’t search the web?

iGoogle’s “What’s Popular” gadget also offers bookmarking functions in the gadget so you can see the items you’ve voted for and the URLs you’ve added. You can also filter results by stories, videos, images and date added.

Unfortunately, Google doesn’t provide any information on how they determine if something is popular or not, so it’s difficult to optimize your site for inclusion. However, with other Google search tools and algorithms, they typically take the following factors into consideration:

* Links pointing to a page
* The number of times a page has been submitted to the gadget
* User votes
* Relevancy – is the topic on the page relevant to the website itself?
* Newsworthiness – if your topic is relevant to today’s headlines, you have a better chance of being listed.

To utilize this gadget you must have an iGoogle account. That means visiting iGoogle and signing up for an account and then simply visiting http://www.google.com/ig/directory, searching for the “What’s Popular” gadget and installing it on your chosen iGoogle page. Once it’s on, then you’re able to begin using it, ranking websites, and adding URLs.

iGoogle works much like other social bookmarking tools and enables browsers and webmasters to become an active part of what’s popular and notable online. Browsers feel empowered and quality websites and web content are recognized for their worth.

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