Search Me?
Tuesday, March 3. 2009
I have been tagged! Bobbie at The Right Blue has tagged me to follow in the Google Search Meme. This meme was started by Rick over at Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice and Sunsets. A great blog on things oceanographic that long ago found a place in my reader.
The rules are fairly simple, but as I found take a little work! Do you know how many searches for which Darker View is in the first page but not top? More than I would have thought. I have typed more than a few into the search box at this point trying to find top placements.
How many of you bloggers play this game from time to time? Open-up a browser window to Google and enter a string of words (that are NOT your blog title) that still delivers your blog as the top-ranked search result.
Finding good search terms that lead to Darker View was not easy. The secret? Find absurd word combinations that nevertheless appear in some article in your blog. This worked quite well in finding number one search results. I was also quite pleased that some not so absurd combinations work as well. It helps that Darker View has a reasonably good Google Page Rank rating, four out of ten. I did check, The Right Blue has a five!
mahukona steamship wreck
TMT site decision
hale pohaku observing
summit pu'us
shooting underwater canon G9
swimming crab kohala
holiday arms race
star party waimea
andrew cooper hawaii
While testing Google search queries I have been considering some things about blogging and the internet in general. Many questions trickle through my thoughts... What makes people come to Darker View and read my ramblings? What makes Google the arbiter of what is important on the web? What impact do we who blog have on society? I have my thoughts, but not definitive answers on these questions. Indeed, a researcher could spend many lifetimes on these sort of questions. Simply considering the questions is a worthy activity once in a while to asses what we do.
Of course to continue a good meme you have to tag a few fellow bloggers to continue, a sort of internet chain letter, but hopefully more interesting results. So I will have to pick on Tom, Damon and Jeremy as the next links.
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All text, photographic and drawn material is the original work of myself unless otherwise noted, Andrew Cooper, all rights reserved. Copyright 1996 to 2010. I will often grant permission for non-profit and educational use of my work upon written request.
When we tell others about blogging, the first question is always "Why is it free? What is Google getting out of us?" Content! Fully half of our blog readers find us by google things from Lulin images to Valspar paint (used for a home improvement project) and Google uses our blog entries for information distribution...
-Dean
I am limited to 3GB Free Storage space for pictures. In Six months of blogging I haven't even used 40% of it and if I had compressed many of my earlier pictures I would still have lots of free space available.
I can upgrade for $10 to get more space and pay more for more and more features, but I have found for the purpose of my blog, the Free stuff works just fine for me.
Bobbie
I come to your blog for the pics and insight ... to stay linked w/someone who actually stargazes and goes up to the summit.
Google is the best at reading what the "crowd" is doing, so that's why.
Bloggers (25% of all Internet users are, by the way) are changing the face of publishing in significant ways. Blogging is breaking up "mass" communication into peer-to-peer conversations -- allowing people of similar interests to efficiently and cost-effectively FIND each other, LEARN from each other, improve on the IDEAS of others (mash-ups) and publish that new/improved content. A tipping point has been reached ... there is no going back. Adapt or die.
Speaking to you, WHT ....
And, BTW, Keck would be smart to recruit you to be the official blogger. That's what I would do. I would approach you and you would have said no -- sternly -- citing ethical and journalistic reasons. But I would have smiled sweetly, used my magical persuasive ways, and over time you would have eventually agreed. But that outfit it still 25 years behind the curve, so that will never happen. Plus they have control issues.
Next time I get something like that tossed at me... I'm going to have to reconsider my "Tags".
http://tinyurl.com/bxz82r