Tag Archives: search engines

Technorati Tags

So I’m playing with Technorati Tags on my pages (you’ll see some attached to some of my posts) and I’m not liking how they are working from a placement standpoint. I am experimenting so we’ll see where they get moved to (or if I even keep them).

Tags are supposed to do two things (IMHO):

  • help you find other people’s posts on the same topic and
  • help other people find my posts related to those same topics.

    Some of these topics I could probably direct you to more specific places if necessary, I’m just hoping to have a few more people find my site.

    I think Movable Type 3.34 and the new version of Ecto (in development) will interact in a way better than I’m currently doing this but for now it’ll help me experiment.

  • Understanding ROBOTS.TXT (which will help search engines understand you)

    So search engines are tricky to understand, especially if you want the search engines to find your site and people to find your site via the search engines. One of the things you may want to do is restrict pages that the search engines find, that might seem silly to exclude yourself but I don’t want people inadvertently finding my site.

    Here’s an example, I don’t let* the search engines search my monthly archives. Because on the page of 20-50 unrelated posts the information on that page is pretty much unrelated by the end of the month. In December 2006 the mention of “iPods” on the 3rd, has nothing to do with any of the mentions of “family” or “Christmas” but if some searched for “iPods” & “family” or “iPods” & “Christmas” they may come upon that page and while I want traffic I’m not trying to lure people here under false pretenses. This is why I have categories like “Apple” and “Friends + Family” that will have related posts in one location (and even then it’s still kinda a wide range of articles).

    So far I’ve just told you why you want a ROBOTS.TXT file but I haven’t told you how and I’m not planning on it, because Google just put together on “Controlling how search engines access and index your website with ROBOTS.TXT”. It’s got a lot of links that take you all over the place but there’s lots of good info there. Continue reading

    Strange Searches

    So if you haven’t noticed it yet I’ve got a search results referrer page set up (in the About section) so you can see many (but not necessarily all) of the search criteria people typed into google/yahoo/etc. and got a link to one of my pages and click on it. Of course they are clickable so you can then see the same results and click on me (or somewhere else) and once I list the top ten you want to go and click on them…

    Common searches (and even stranger that they clicked on me):

  • tempur-pedic (or tempurpedic or even temperpedic) – this is the type of mattress I bought for my bed.
  • boogers immune (or other variations)- this is a funny post be sure to search for it.
  • senior quotes – I listed a quote they did at graduation last year.
  • national geographic theme song – I mentioned this in a meme or two.
  • lots of joan of arcadia references – THE best show on TV.
  • sex flash – another meme question
  • lots to do with duct tape prom outfits – another interesting post.
  • oleana david mamet – lots of people looking for information on David Mamet’s play Oleana (or movie)