Google's Lively project, announced yesterday and is somewhat of a Second Life clone (a virtual world within a web page), has gained a lot of momentum with a lot of Techmeme discussion.

But can Lively help your search rankings? Probably not -- unless your Lively page is, well, lively. As Tedster puts it, your backlink profile is still the strongest indicator of your search rankings.

When it comes to PR, that only comes from your backlink profile. If adding Lively functionality ehlps earn your site more more natural backlinks, that can help PR. But links will mostly be based on what you do with Lively, and not the mere fact that you've got the technology.

So will the mere fact of sticking Lively onto your page do anything? It's unlikely. You need to still have that killer content and whatever else it takes to boost that backlink profile.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

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