Google bait this

This is a picture of Peregrin Wildoak and Mitzy Gaynor.

One of the things that I need a score card to keep track of is exactly who Peregrin Wildoak is, and exactly who are his sock puppets. In fact, it has gotten to the point where I wonder if I am actually a real erotica writer and professional student who is taking a semester off to work on his business, or if I am just a delusional sock puppet who thinks that he should be writing bad sex scenes involving trolls and half-dressed Adepts while studying for the GRE simply because he has fallen behind the washing machine.

I figure that it is only a matter of time before I learn that I am Peregrin Wildoak's sock puppet.

In the interests of keeping my sanity, well what's left of it, I am going to be starting a campaign to convince Google that my cats are Peregrin Wildoak and Mitzy Gaynor. After all, there are no "real" pictures of Peregrin or Mitzy anywhere, therefore it should be easy to fool Google into thinking that I have two tribble eating cats who write about gun control and the bad food that is served at the local KFC. I suppose that they could argue about who is really a servant of Eris, and whether there is intelligent life on earth, and if one should wear a fez and bowtie to a Golden Dawn lodge meeting--you know the really important stuff; none of that unimportant stuff like unrevealed teachings and lore that just bores people to death. No, they will be all about strife and war, and never mention peace and harmony and how it takes a ***** to ascend into a solar body.

And yes, this is just a wild attempt to get all their Google love and deny them readers. Think of it as me doing the world a favor: everyone loves cats and Peregrin and Mitzy would make great cats.

Most read month ever



I am not even as cool as Morgan Grimes.

One of the hazards of being a blogger is that one cannot help looking at the traffic figures. Well, I suppose that you could prevent yourself from looking at your traffic figures with a couple of rolls of duct tape. And honestly, it is probably one of the worst things you can do--look at your traffic figures that is; duct tape is perfectly acceptable for most household chores (babysitting kids, fixing furniture, getting that annoying neighbor across the street to shut up and stay on their side of the street).

Why is it the worst possible thing you can do (look at your own traffic figures, that is)? Because you can find out that you are less popular than Morgan Grimes. (Sorry, I am busy rewatching the entire Chuck series--I am sorry that it is not Shakepeare or something else high-brow...my readers do not actually come here for educated dialogue, do they?)

Or worse, you can look at your traffic figures and think that you are more popular and successful than Morgan Grimes. (For the one reader who does not know, Morgan Grimes was a supporting character in the TV show Chuck--a show about a Buy More Nerd Herder who downloaded the Intersect, a government data base into his head. Morgan Grimes is, well, a nerd into comic books and science fiction and not terribly cool. I have mentioned the fact that you are not here for intelligent conversation, right?)

Anyway, yes, I forgot to duct tape myself to the other side of the room far away from my computer...and therefore, I looked at my traffic figures for last month. The bad news--I am not even as cool as Morgan Grimes. The good news--last month was my most read month ever.

And this is despite several people deciding that they will never give me any traffic ever again. I am not sure that they realize that I haven't gotten any traffic from them for months...yes, I check my traffic figures on a regular basis. Makes me suspect that my audience is completely different than theirs. (Hmmm, I wonder if they get the smart Shakespeare audience...or maybe they actually get the people that Shakespeare was really writing for...sorry, that is a literature joke--after all, Shakespeare was writing for the commoners in the pit; you know the type of person who actually likes watching bear-baiting and men dressed up pretending to be witches and young maidens.)

So what strange things did I find in my figures? (You didn't want to know--how rude...of one of us...I am guessing it is you, dear reader, who thinks Morgan Grimes is cooler than I am.)

Surprise number one was that both Japan and Brazil made my top ten countries list for readership...I am not sure what I am writing that attracting them.

Surprise number two was that one of the top ten posts last month was about the blogs that I were reading a year ago (and they are not even occult blogs)--I am guessing it has to do with the fact that I mentioned one star Amazon book reviews in that post (but they had nothing to do with those one star Amazon book reviews that erupted last month).

Surprise number three is that one of my Christmas Kitty posts is still getting traffic. (Really? A Xmas post?)

Oh, wait...surprise number four is that my post about not warring against Christmas is also getting hits. (Don't ask me to explain it...I can't.)

I gained a new number two all time most read post last month "What is Griffin trying to accomplish?" It shot up and passed last year's favorite about Robert Zink being expelled from his own Order. Well, shot up and passed it by 123 views. And there is really no chance of it becoming my all time number one post--it would need about sixteen times the number of views to surpass my all time number one post on Understanding Search Engines. And no, I have no real idea what traffic would be like on a Morgan Grimes post, but I am guessing that Morgan Grimes would be more popular. (No?!)

As for my next blog post, well, it will be my 777th post on this blog. I wonder what it could be about. Maybe I will write about Morgan Grimes and how he should have been the star of Chuck.

Blog Advice on Understanding Search Engines

Now censored because AdSense says that you are not allowed to look at boobs.

Yesterday, I was reading a post by Rufus Opus where he revealed that one of the search terms driving traffic to his Head For the Red blog is "bikes with high handlebars." Ahh, the mysteries of Google and its fellow search engines.

In an ideal world, if you needed to find something on the world wide web, you would ask a real person who keeps up with the webpages for your inquiry. Unfortunately, we do not live in ideal world.

For one thing, there are way too many webpages out there, and more are being added everyday. Two, we know the type of stuff that most people google for. And we just don't want to get involved in those types of web searches.

Salma Hayek--now censored for AdSense...because you might think of sex.

(By the way, my use of "google" as a verb is wrong. Google is a trademarked business name. The proper term for "googling" is "searching." This is much like Xerox being a trademarked business name; it is "photocopying", not "xeroxing.")

Or maybe we do want to get involved in such searches. After all, if you are reading this series, you are probably interested in getting more traffic to your blog. In which case, a picture of boobs can't hurt, can it?

Can't Google for boobs on AdSense supported webpages.

Am I above trying to corner the market for people who are searching for "Golden Dawn boobs"? No.

In fact, "Golden Dawn boobs" looks like a good "long tail" candidate.

(And the market for "Star Trek Golden Dawn" has already been cornered---more or less. Don't believe me---google it. I wonder how much traffic David Griffin gets with that search term. What? You haven't wondered this? Anyway, back to search engines.)

It is the strange way that search engines work, and the way that people search for stuff on the internet, that makes long tail terms valuable. But that is a post for another day.

So what is the best way to understand search engines? After all, due to the secrecy that surrounds the programs that drive them, one can only guess what makes them tick. (It is amazing that businesses are better at keeping secrets than secret societies are.) And given the three or four hundreds factors that they track, even if their inwards were not shrouded in secrecy, it would still be a muddle.

To make things simple, think of a search engine as a spider demon who is pretending to be a human being, who is an expert in whatever terms that you punched into the query form.

Of course, this makes things simple for us---after all, we can write for human beings, including those occultists who just happen to like bikes with tall handlebars, and trust that if we are ideal according to a complicated mathmatical formula that the search engine will send traffic in our direction.

The trick is figuring who we are writing for...which is probably what I will discuss next Thursday.

In the meantime, enjoy a picture of Bart Simpson commenting on the evils of Google.

In other words, don't email people about boobs because someday Google will tell the world.

AdSense says that you are not allowed to see boobs.

[Updated August 19, 2016 because...AdSense says that there was sexual content on this page because...I used the word "boobs" and had two meme pictures that had women who had boobs...and this was wrong because....boobs equal sex even when they are covered with bras. I am guessing some web-spider decided this because no one who actually looked at the actual post would actually think that this was sexual content. Heaven knows what the web-spiders must think of my posts warning people about sex offenders and why sex magic is a bad thing when it comes to running an esoteric tradition. But in all fairness to the web-spiders, it might not have been them---it could have been one of the Golden Dawn boobs reporting me (top of my boob list is Robert Zink and David Griffin--which I would post a picture of, but hey, they are boobs! and AdSense says that you are not allowed to see pictures of them...which is probably a good thing because people have been known to go bad when they see a picture of one of them.]

Internet postings are forever

Occasionally, I get requests (emails) asking me to delete old postings of mine. The latest was from someone concerned that the posts were going to be indexed by search engines, and that their employer and friends were going to discover their religion. Of course, they did not indicate what postings I mentioned them in, or the site or forum, or even what the postings were about. Given the fact that I have been involved on the internet for ten years now (I think), and average several posts and comments a week, that is a lot of posts that I would have to go though if I was even remotely inclined to delete things.

There was also the little fact that I did not recognize the name or email address of the person making the request. So without more information, I have no idea where (or how far back) to even start looking.

And this is assuming that I even have the authority to delete the postings that this person is concerned about in the first place. Often on forums, the only people who have the authority to delete anything are the list owners. So both I and this party would have to ask for the posts to be removed...and if they do not give them any more information than they did me...well, there is an new old saying "Things you say and do on the internet are forever."

This is something I think a lot of people forget. The things that you post on internet forums, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are forever. Between internet caches, system backups, saved emails and files, and the occasional hard-copy printout, your activity on the internet has the potential to be around much longer than you might think it does.

(This is one of the hidden reasons that we will never see the various Golden Dawn groups clean up their internet past. It is a lot of work for very little gain considering that someone could come along and create a new website and put it all back up online shortly after they do their cleanup.)

Before you start posting on the internet, especially if you are doing and saying things that might cost you a job or a relationship later, you need to decide what you are willing and unwilling to deal with. What are you willing to have be public knowledge for the rest of your life and beyond? Know your limits and stay in your limits...and don't change your mind (because it is really hard to change your mind later).

And don't plan on getting a lot of help from people like me who have busy lives either if you change your mind later. Between my college homework and being a freelance writer I do not have time for a fishing trip to locate an unknown post. Remember you are responsible for your own internet reputation: Don't post anything that you don't want your boss, lover or grandmother to read.