The Finest Handmade Corks
Storytime at Dotcomicide.
About 150 years ago, just about anything liquid that was worth saving in a bottle was stoppered with a cork. This of course, lead to the existence of a few very powerful cork distributorships.
The easiest way to sort the corks was to dump them all into a nearby lake, at one point their were about 8 billion of them, bobbing this way and that, just waiting to be plugged into a bottle. Demand was so great that none of the cork distributors could actually inspect all the individual corks, they'd just scoop them up by the thousands and show them to their customers.
The problem was that they received cork of varying quality, some were finely crafted corks lovingly made by hand in Podunk, Iowa, and some were shoddy, "Made in Spamistan" corks that didn't hold up to close scrutiny.
So the distributors developed an elaborate quality control system, a cork sorting machine, so they'd scoop as many corks as they could, and let them roll down massive clockwork conveyor belts where they'd be guided through a series of scales, measuring tubes and proddy things that attempted to make sure that the ones that didn't meet their quality standards were not shown to their clients.
Every once in a while, a Spamistanian cork would elude the automated inspection process and get put on the display shelves, and sometimes a Podunkian cork would get crushed in the mass of gears and pulleys of their clockwork inspection system, never to be seen again.
"Sorry, we didn't mean to crush your little cork", the cork distributors would say. Sometimes they'd say "As far as we can tell, your little cork is in the lake somewhere, it's just not on display where most clients can see it." Then the Podunkian craftsmen would have to wait til the cork dealers stirred their watery inventory again and see if their little cork would pop up out of the murky depths once again.
The fine cork craftsmen would seethe and rant about how unfair the inspection system was. The Spamistanians would smirk, because they knew that as long as cork stoppers were in high demand, the inspection process would be automated and they could keep churning out shoddy corks, because enough would slip past the inspection system to make it worth their time.
Just got back from the Webmasterworld Pubcon in New Orleans a couple days ago, and there's a lot of news to tell.
Met several engineers from Google. Cool guys (and gal). Met several engineers from MSN Search. Cool guys (and gal). Met two engineers from Yahoo. Cool guys. Met the director of promotions for Ask Jeeves. Cool guy.
What do all the SEs have in common? Well they have normal everyday computer geeks all working hard to make the same product - quality search results. There was no evidence of an evil cabal that is trying to destroy the affiliate model, there was no evidence of the SEs targeting specific niches to boost their advertising revenues (Well, maybe Ask Jeeves, a little).
The search engine engineers all really seemed to have the same goal - they want to produce the best search results that they can. (Except for Jeeves - we all know they're just a bunch of money grubbers).
The problem is the lone webmaster sitting at his desk in Podunk, Iowa takes it all too personally. When a search engine nukes his rankings, the issue suddenly is that they're after the little guy. Earth to Podunk - None of the search engines know you who you are - as in the singular, not collective "you", no, they have no idea.
They don't see the "handcrafted by Bob" branded on the side of your little cork - they just see 8 metric tons automatically sorted cork waiting to be parceled out to eager customers. They certainly will be sympathetic, if you happen to corner them at a party, but relax, they're not out to get you.
If you are having trouble ranking a site, just try to think like a search engineer might, and think of the cork sorting machine, that prodded and tested all those corks. What should your page tell a search engine that will make it appear to be a quality page? What signals could the search engines use that would easily and automatically detect sites that are they type of quality that their customers, the searchers, want?
We all strive to be Podunkians, perhaps, or maybe some prefer the Spamistanian model, but in the long run, we all have to take our licks from time to time, no matter which method we use - but trust me, it's nothing personal.
