Site issues come in all shapes and forms, and no one seems immune. Google’s Gmail problems the last couple of days, where a number of Gmail users temporarily lost all of their emails, was proof that Murphy’s Law is alive and well on the Internet.

However, this post is not really about that specific incident, but rather about an interesting detail in the way Google communicated the problem.

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PageRank (PR) was Google’s original secret weapon, a scale that would rank websites based on incoming links and where those links came from. Although its relevance has arguably faded a bit over the years as Google has added more and more criteria to site rankings, it still goes hand in hand with SEO and every webmaster out there wants to have a high PR.

But do you need a high PR to have a successful site? Search rankings are one thing, but what about actual site popularity and traffic?

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We know Twitter is getting a lot of press these days, but how much? And how much media attention are they getting compared to other hugely popular sites and companies like Facebook, YouTube and Google? Read on to find out.

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Digg had an outage today that was most likely the result of the ongoing migration of Digg’s servers to a new data center.

That didn’t stop people from wondering what was going on when the site went offline, as you could see for example on Twitter.

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It has been widely reported that Google’s Gmail has been having problems lately. Now it seems like Microsoft perhaps had a hand in spreading the news coverage, fanning the flames a bit.

Here is a quote from an InformationWeek article about the recent Gmail outages:

That didn’t stop a Microsoft spokesperson from reaching out to me to make sure I was aware of the current Google Apps problems. The spokesperson said to me in an e-mail, “The Gmail outage was reported (and buried) on a discussion board yesterday and a solution is expected (but not promised) by EOD today — 24 hrs later.”

He implied that the story wasn’t getting the press that it should.

So, basically, Microsoft’s PR people are trying to make sure that Google’s trouble gets as much attention as possible.

We were curious if this happens a lot. Do companies often contact journalists to point out the failings of their competitors?

We fired off this question to Eric Zeman, the journalist at InformationWeek who wrote the article we quoted from above, and here is what he told us:

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Apple is famous for its well-designed hardware and software. Much of their success is due to innovative products combined with smart marketing. They have always had their own way of doing things. If you’re an Apple fan you have probably seen that famous yellow post-it note. We’re of course talking about the “maintenance” page that [...]

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