Handsome Logic

Bill Slawski over at SEO by the Sea published some details on three recently-published Google patent applications related to Google Notebooks. While I am an avid reader of Bill’s blog, I generally don’t put much faith in the predictive abilities of search patents.

The details of the patents suggest that Google may one day begin using the presence of a web document in users’ Google Notebooks as a factor in the document’s organic ranking.

The idea behind this is sound. If many users are using a page on your web site as a reference in their Google Notebooks, then it stands to reason that your page has value. How many sites are referenced in MS Word documents or Powerpoint presentations? Tons.

But how popular is Google Notebooks?

Not very. Not very.

Looking at this data I can see only two logical, possible conclusions:

1. We’re reading another empty search patent (hey, in the information age, the name of the game is CYA.)

2. Google is planning to aggressively push Notebooks as their approved social bookmarking platform. The thinly-adopted Google Notebooks already works with other Google Docs applications, which will (perhaps someday) put it within reach of the average computer user. For now, though, social bookmarking isn’t for mass consumption.