Hi-Tech, Sex, and X-Ray Specs
Some of you will notice that the title of this piece has an internal rhyme scheme. The Google search bot will not. The Google search bot, if it deigns to notice, will sift through the text, giving emphasis to the title, and merrily send people who search for sex (the undisputed champion of search terms on the net), hi-tech, and x-ray specs.
This piece will see nary a peek from people who are looking for sex on the net because there are literally millions of sites out there cajoling the bot into ranking their sites on the coveted first page of Google’s search findings for the term sex. There is a remote chance that someone willing to thumb electronically through a few hundred thousand listings for sex might light on the page, see that it is not really about sex, and get off it quicker than Cool Papa Bell could get into bed.
Bots are literal-minded things.
Hi-tech is a nebulous adjective that means pertaining to anything that uses sophisticated technology. It is possible, but not likely, that a few people looking for the latest whiz-bang gadget will peruse this article, notice that it has nothing to do with iPods, Blackberries, or UFOs, and be disappointed.
Why?
Because the Google search bot is inextricably married to HTML. HTML is a markup language designed originally for academic presentations. At its core is the good old-fashioned roman numeral outline that English teachers gleefully have tortured students with since the beginning of time. First your headline, then your main point, then your secondary point, ad nauseum. The HTML equivalent is h1, h2, h3. Bots, being quantitative creatures, determine how relevant your article is to a certain keyword by how frequently the word appears in the article.
Google is a little more sophisticated than that in their search algorithm, but not much more. If they see too many, and only they can determine how many is too many, occurrences of a word in a given electronic space, the bot will discount it because the humans at Google think that someone is trying to manipulate their search results.
Google does not want anyone manipulating their search results without paying for the privilege, thank you very much. If you want natural rankings you had better just follow the outline, Buster, else you can pay Google big bucks to get your site noticed. If your site does not make big bucks, it can still get noticed by being an educational site, or being what they deem an influential site, which is, of course, a site with links from educational sites.
Google sows nothing, yet reaps the lion’s share of benefits on the internet. Google shows promise, but delivers illusion like –well, x-ray specs.
X-ray specs were sold in the ads section of comic books in the days when comics mainly were read by adolescent boys. The ad plainly stated the specs produced an optical illusion, then asked if that really was your friend’s body you see under his clothes. If the longevity of the ad is any indicator, they sold tons of them. Kids did not buy those comics because they were looking for x-ray specs, they bought them because they were hooked on the exploits of Ironman, Batman, or Superman.
If Superman was an internet creation, the character would be offered for free because no one would pay to see a new character. Having already paid the ISP once for access, why should they? Unless Superman’s creators paid Google, or one of its imitators, money to get the site noticed, it would languish and die. The genius marketers who sold x-ray specs would not pay the owner to have their ad on the Superman pages, they would pay Google. Google, in turn, would pay the Superman owner a pittance for delivering a possible customer to the specs site.
Of course, the ad would mainly appear on sites pertaining to x-rays, technical specs, or technical specs on x-rays. It might pop up on the Superman site if the Man of Steel used his x-ray vision. Not many x-ray specs would get sold.
The manufacturers of x-ray specs would be much better off with their own site selling their product directly to adolescents using phrases from the ad. Is that his body you “see” under his clothes? Look right through the flesh and see the bones underneath.
Superman? Forget Superman. Superman has been borged; he is irrelevant.
Once the internet held the promise of being a blank canvas, an invitation to creativity, a chance for global communication and expression.
Instead, we have a motley collection of pornography, sales pitches, and how-to articles.
X-Ray Specs consist of an outsized pair of glasses with plastic frames and white cardboard “lenses” printed with concentric red circles, and emblazoned with the legend “X-RAY VISION”.