This and That on a Monday
Posted On: 2009-12-07
Ok I'm the first to admit it ... I don't travel as well as I once did. After 1625 miles in two of the last four days my brain feels like mush so just don't expect anything profound from me today.
Yeah I heard that comment about never finding anything profound in my scribblings ... but that's ok ... I can handle rejection and I can cut you off my Christmas card list too ... when my brain gets around to thinking about it.
Twitter ... not all that popular
Shock!! Horror!! It seems Twitter is not all that popular after all ... well maybe it is popular but there are plenty of online activities that are more popular. Unfortunately not all of them are as useful as Twitter but who cares about things that are useful and would you believe that one of those online activities that's more popular than Twitter is Farmville?
If you haven't encountered Farmville before then you're probably lucky. It's one of those Facebook games that people can play and in Farmville you're a farmer. For people who want to work online and be productive Farmville is a great way to waste time while Twitter on the other hand is a great place to get relevant information and keep up with the latest news.
Google tells lies
Now isn't that something I used to say quite often a few years back? Why yes it is and, if you didn't believe me back then, now there's some more proof that I just might be right. Me ... right? Yep I do get things right occasionally.
So what's the latest lie that Google has told? Well it's probably not one of the latest ones but they have shown it to be a lie just last Friday. Three years ago they announced that personalized search was always going to be something that if people wanted they would have to opt-in to be part of it but now that's all changed.
Suddenly Google wants to help people ... yeah right! ... now Google knows that personalized search is going to be so much better for people who are searching for things so it no longer matters what they said three years ago or which computer you're using for search, you're still going to get personalized search whether you want it or not.
Of course, it may not be your personalized search ... it may be personalized search based on what the last person to use the computer looked for ... but it will be personalized search. So in other words ... if you search Google for something Google is not going to show you anything new, Google is just going to show you the same things that they showed you the last time you searched for that term.
There is an opt-out option but it's not easy to do and most people won't even understand what they have to do to rid themselves of this unwanted rubbish.
For businesses that want to get onto page one of the search engine results pages for terms that are important for them life is going to be very hard indeed. For those of us who offer search engine optimization services it's going to make life very interesting.
While Steve and I have been way too tired to think much about it just yet, at first glance it seems that the only way to have any sort of hope of being certain that your website will appear on page one of the search engine results pages is by paying for it via Adwords.
Yes, that means more money in Google's pockets so are we seeing some sort of connection here? I may be blonde but even I can see that there certainly is.
If this latest sneaky little move by Google does make it past all the Privacy groups out there then it's going to mean that a lot of small, medium and large businesses that are out there on the Web today are going to have to seriously rethink their online strategies. Perhaps we'll be seeing some moves by many businesses to get their URLs in front of customers in other ways than just relying on the main Google search engine.
Life certainly won't be boring in the coming months and that's good ... I have to admit that life was getting a little dull in the world of search engine optimization and it needed something to liven everyone up.
Why don't we all just boycott Google?
Yes, in the middle of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that arose over Google's latest move on one webmaster board there was some bright spark who announced that everyone should just boycott everything to do with Google.
He even wanted a Firefox plugin that would warn him when he landed on a site that used Adsense, Maps, Analytics or a Google search box. If the site used any of those he would leave immediately and never go back.
Others on the board were very gentle with him. They explained that if he wanted to skip every site that had some Google related script or display running on it then he wouldn't have to spend much time surfing the Net in future.
Look at what's loading behind the scenes when you visit a website and you will soon discover that just about everyone uses something that's controlled by Google. Our defiant friend would probably end his daily Net surfing in less than five minutes if he really was serious about boycotting Google.
And now I'm off to do something that's not going to require much brain-power ... maybe tomorrow my brain will be back to full-strength but right now all it wants to do is go to sleep. My body wants to work but my brain just wants to see the rest of the day out in idle mode.