Googling

Since installing my ego-stroking site tracker earlier last week, I have finally gotten one Google search linking to my blog. No, it was not on the keywords "deep philosophical insights" or "really fascinating people" or even "people I should give money to", but simply "ugly purple dresses."

This took me back just a little. Sadly, I can actually think of legitimate reasons for searching on "ugly purple dresses," but I can't think of how my blog would be at all tied to anything like that. So, I ran the search, and, what do you know, my blog was 8th or so on the list of results. Pulling up Google's cache of my page showed that it had archived a snapshot of my blog from almost a month ago, when I was talking about ugly purple ads on accuweather and dresses in Christian sub-culture.

I guess the moral of this story is that Google, while a great engine to search for general knowledge, is not a good engine to search blogs with. Something like BlogDigger (by Baltiblog's own Greg Gershman) is much more suited to that role.

September 21, 2003 06:34 PM
5 Comments

Thanks!

It is true - this is the perfect example as to why Google is no good for blogs. Using RSS provides much finer granularity in the search. RSS searching isnt the ideal solution either, but its a step in the right direction.

Pondered by Greg at September 21, 2003 09:30 PM

Welcome to the club of obsessive stat trackers. You may think "I'm not obsessive" -- just wait. I went through a phase of checking my stats daily to see who visited from where and what search phrases. It's addicting.

Pondered by John at September 22, 2003 09:51 AM

Pardon my ignorance, but how do you get google to search your blog? I asked Josiah about this and he said it "just takes a couple weeks". Nevertheless, google will find Tom's blog (okie.chattablogs.com) but not mine. You guys sound like you know about this stuff...

Pondered by abe at September 25, 2003 02:16 PM

Google is a little bit of a dark cloud of search and ranking algorithms. I know some of it is affected by what people click on after searching on an item, some of it is geared towards the placement of words on the blog, and that updates take at least 2 days before google will reflect that.

One thing I did notice about your blog, abe, is that the distinct word "okie" doesn't seem to actually appear. "aokie" appears, but not "okie" by itself. That may or may not make a difference. Just a thought.

Pondered by maphet at September 25, 2003 06:15 PM

well, i've searched for other things that *are* on there and it still didn't find it. I'll fiddle with it a little longer. thanks for the input.

Pondered by abe at September 25, 2003 09:22 PM