Day 149: My Google ranking drops; about the Blog
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day 149
— My Google ranking drops; about the Blog
29-December-1971
(Wed.)
TRANSCRIPT
A good day. Spent whole day working in electronic
music lab. Got a lot (which was a little) done.
REFLECTIONS
1971.
Nothing.
My
Google ranking drops to zero. Why? I’m
not certain. I know that a couple of weeks ago, there
was news that Google changed their search engine
rankings. They certainly did.
Posting
content is not enough. I don’t do
anything special to stimulate my Google page ranking.
I just try to post interesting content. When I first
started the blog, I didn’t appear on the Google radar
at all for a month or so. I read that “content is
king” and that
continual posts of content
generally give a good ranking. For a few
months,
this was true. Certainly,
outside page links to the blog and perhaps number of
unique visits also influence the rankings. I don’t do
well here.
#1
and #2 on Google. After a
couple of months, I got “noticed” by Google. In the
time period of 3-4 months, if you typed in
“36yearsago” into a Google search bar, there were
many hits and I was #1. Of course, you are typing in
a very unique and specific term. If you typed in “36
years ago” into the search bar, I used to come out on
the first page, usually between #6 and #2; #2 a fair
amount of the time. The only item beating me out was
the “36 years ago – Apollo Moon Landing” page.
36yearsago.com was in pretty good company.
Zero
ranking—content is no longer king.
Today, if you type in “36 years ago,” I don’t appear
at all. ZERO. Thanks, Google engineers. As I browse
through the rankings of the other sites, I can see
some being ranked higher than me—Apollo Moon Landing,
President Lyndon Johnson, and so on. However, “What
Happened to Michael 36 years ago?,” a news story on
an ABC site, and at about #6 or so, is only a
single-page story.
Although I sympathize with the story, it is only a
single page. Thus, content, or continual posting of
content, is no longer king. Not even Queen.
Apparently, page visits and page links are king.
Blog
marketing. I don’t
market this blog, though I would like to start. I
just tell friends and colleagues verbally. Most
people seem to read a few pages then move on. A few
friends and colleagues revisit in moderation. I may
start marketing, and have some ideas on this. Perhaps
I will write a few articles for papers or magazines.
Time is the issue. I suspect that joining blog groups
will
not help
because there are millions of blogs out there.
You and I are just one of them.
Someone
once said that “Blogging is a desperate cry for
attention.” Yes, we want people to read about our
postings. That’s the dilemma—how do we get the
attention. People are too busy in their lives to go
reading or browsing more than a few online websites.
Social
networks don’t work. I’ve
joined a bunch of social networks where I point
people to this blog. Doesn’t work. The few friends I
link to
already know about this
blog. Social networks consist of mostly your friends
and I don’t have many colleagues, friends, and family
members that are big into blogs, podcasts, and social
networks. It's just not a part of their lives. (By
the way, that is a big market yet to be tapped.)
Then, there is the issue that your friends won’t be
your friends for very long if you “broadcast” each
days post to them via the Internet, RSS feeds, email,
Twitter, or Jaiku.
The need to belong; to be recognized.
One thing
is for certain, everyone in the entire world, has
(1)
a need to belong to a group
(whether
family, friends, relatives, a social network, a
specialty website on photography, film composing, and
a million other interests), and (2)
to be recognized by others
(here’s my
band, my songs, my screenplay, my photos, my diggs on
Digg.com). Bands, musicians, artists, writers,
composers, songwriters, photographers, authors,
poets, dancers and others want to be “discovered” and
have their creative work seen and recognized by
others. Or, sometimes, it is trying to drive traffic
to a business. Hopefully, discovery leads to success,
new opportunities, and financial rewards. Believe me,
I’m one of these people as well. Almost no one knows
me, has heard my music, or knows of the many things I
have done in my life. This blog is just a one-year
sliver of my life’s experience. You and I are the
same. You also have interesting stories and
accomplishments to share with the world. We,
together, have a “social” need to share, to belong,
to be recognized.
The
future. In the
future, I hope to launch a website or two to address
a couple of these issues. I’m just saving the money
and looking to find a good, high-quality, outsourcing
database/web programming company in India to get me
started at a reasonable price. Any recommendations?
Can you program the next Virb, Bebo, Ning, Facebook,
or Digg?
Google
Analytics. I started
Google Analytics late, after the point where I had
already told most of my friends and colleagues. To
date, I guess have had less than 100 unique visitors
including those before Analytics. Most visitors seem
to read about 3+ pages on each visit and spend 10-15
minutes on the site. Who wants to read about someone
else’s life? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Target
the audience. The target
audience for this blog is young people and old people
and those in between. Music students. College
students. Creative people. However, my message is
hidden in the many posts—don’t give up on your
dreams; take those first steps on your journey. In my
life, I sometimes feel that I have given up a bit
early on trying to accomplish my lifelong creative
dreams. Sure, we have to work to make a living.
However, many of us have a creative side to us.
Discover it for the first time; or revitalize it. For
the last few years, I have felt that my lost
creativity has been revitalized. I want the same for
you.
The
blog’s message. On the
surface, this blog is just a transcription of the
daily events of one year of my life. My reflections
are the commentary that I hope will sometimes offer
new ideas and perspectives to anyone reading this. My
saying from the Welcome page summarizes this: “It’s
never too late to start; it’s never too early too
start.”
Fame
plays a part. This blog,
in my mind, is actually a book. It is difficult to
read any blog, chronologically. This blog would make
a nice coffee-table book and the chronology in book
form would be obvious. However, the question is, does
anyone really want to read about someone else’s life?
Most of the time, no. However, if my other ventures
suddenly catapulted me to fame (alongside Sergei and
Larry of Google fame), would anyone want to read
about my life? Yes. It would be a New York Times
bestseller. If Sergei and Larry write a book, I am
buying it. How did they start Google? Where did their
ideas come from? What did they do in college? Of
course, that fame will not happen to me, nor do I
want that amount of success. A bit of success, yes.
Larry and Sergei, call me.
John
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