Full, and unorganized.
But I think I see a common technological thread between the in-box and the blog. One that kind-of explains why both are messy.
So I thought I’d write that up. Continue reading Post #2015: Week 3 of my readership drought. Why my website is like my inbox.
On the plus side, I’m learning a whole lot more about how the Internets work.
On the downside, perhaps Warren Buffet said it best:
"If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy."
The long and the short of it is that Google (search) hates me, as of about two weeks ago. Likely, this is due to an update in Google’s search algorithm that occurred mid-August. And not due to anything I have done (lately) to offend Google.
Long may she rule.
More seriously, I have tried to figure out what changed, and
Bullets 1) and 2) should be self-explanatory.
But before I get to Bullet 3), explain this to me. When I asked Gencraft’s AI for a picture of “get in bed with the Devil”, it had absolutely no problem spitting out male devils. Such as the guy on the left up there. But when I said “get in bed with a lady Devil”, or “female Devil”, I had to put the system in Anime mode to be able to squeak that one picture past the censors. Every other attempt at a lady Devil in bed got me the spilled-ice-cream-cone-of-death black-and-white graphic at the very top of the post, presumably for being risque.
I do not quite know why that is true. Yet I am amused by it.
This shares ignorance, but not amusement, with my current situation with Google Search. I do wonder if Google has somehow inserted some AI-rule-making, which would mean that not even Google itself would know why Google Search no longer finds me. I think “connectionist garbage” is the term for what you get when you try to dissect an AI to learn what it was thinking.
So, getting in bed with Devil. By bullet 3) above, I mean, with all due respect to that most gracious of near-monopolies, Google Search, that I installed Google SiteKit as a plug-in for this WordPress-based blog.
What I didn’t realize, when I did that, is that Google was going to insert code into my web pages. Which, admittedly, and in 20-20 hindsight, was stupid on my part. Nonetheless, when I went to the top of one of my blog pages and asked my browser to “inspect” the underlying code, I felt just a little unclean to find this, sketched below, as part of the web page you are currently reading:
<!-- Google tag (gtag.js) snippet added by Site Kit --> <!-- Google Analytics snippet added by Site Kit --> (See below) <!-- End Google tag (gtag.js) snippet added by Site Kit -->
Below: I took out the actual code, above, so as not to offend.
The omitted code starts <script> , and ends with </script>, so, you know, all other things equal, even though I don’t read this computer language, kinda think this might be html? Javascript? Beats me. Anyway, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that the thing Google Sitekit inserted is a script.
And it gives a big ol’ shoutout to Google Tag Manager, and passes some sort of fixed ID, which I guess … ID’s me? For Google’s purposes. Yeah, it’s a good thing. So says Google, so it must be so.
But in addition, or possibly because of some implementation of this Tag-Manager thing, I now have access to Google Search Console. This turns out to be the place where Google tells you everything that’s wrong with your website. Of which, I seem to have a bounty.
Anyway, Google Search Console is where I am now learning that:
To be clear, I wrote complex computer programs for all of my professional life. But now, with this stuff? Here’s my generic algorithm for trying to look into any dimension of this problem.
START STEP 0: Come across a term that I don't understand. STEP 1: Look up Google's definition of that term. STEP 2: Find a term in that definition that I do not understand. GOTO STEP 1 END
And that infinite do-loop is where it stands, in terms of the technical side of this inquiry. Presumably, I’ll make some headway, or I won’t.
Do do I care about readership or not?
There were a couple of times in the past when this blog actually served some purpose. During those times, sure, readership was desired.
But those are now ancient history. These days, I write this mostly for myself. So, believe it or not, there are benefits to doing this even if I’m the only reader.
Use 1: Writing enforces rigorous thinking and fact-checking. For one thing, I find that being forced to write something out does wonders for getting my thinking straight on an issue. I’m not the first to say that. I had an economics professor, JRT Hughes, who put it something like: “Writing is good because it allows us to check the logical consistency of more than just adjacent sentences.”
Use 2: Diary, particularly garden diary. For another thing, a blog is a good way to mark events. That’s been particularly useful for the garden. But the result is that this blog is part diary. (Which is guess is the original intent of web log, now blog.)
Use 3: Generating and sharing novel information, analysis, and DIY. In addition, I use this blog to document any useful thing I’ve made, or insights that I think I’ve made. That can be as dumb as yep, I really did patch my driveway by hand, here’s how it went. Mostly these are things where either I’m glad somebody offered some hints on the internet, or where I wish somebody had.
Something as prosaic as the price and availability of canning jar lids. Or something a little more highbrow and sciency-y. Microplastic. PFAs. Documenting the northward creep of the USDA climate zones. My Teutonic two-tier testing series (e.g., Post #605) gives me a few “Flowers for Algernon” moments when I re-read it now. The best intellectual exercises that ample free time and intense boredom can generate.
Use 4: Biting social commentary. Well, I’m amused by my own, even if nobody else is.
Of those current uses, all my hits were on 3). Garden hints are popular, DIY stuff is somewhat popular. My most popular post ever was on making a cheap heated outdoor faucet cover. And, to be clear, those are often just as much to make note of what I did or found, than to make advice generally available to random Google-Search-driven strangers.
So … nah, not really. It’s a kick when I get a lot of hits on some technical article.
But I don’t need that to fuel this blog. Much.
I will continue to investigate my situation vis-a-vis Google Search — may the very electrons of the internet sing her praises — and if there’s something I can easily fix on this website, I will.
Maybe I’ll finally learn how the internet actually works.
This blog lost about 2/3rds of its daily visitors, on or about August 20, 2024. That, against a months-long backdrop of steady daily page views.
“Tarnation”, I muttered, “what in blue blazes happened?”
Hopping horny-toads, what flea-bitten varmint did this? I’m-a-gonna blow ’em to smithereenies.
I write this blog mostly to amuse myself and a select few friends and relatives. But almost all of my page views are from strangers who find my how-to/technical information articles via Google. For example, my most popular post, by far, shows how to make a cheap heated faucet cover to keep exterior faucets from freezing.
And, upon re-reading the last couple of weeks of posts, I think I’ve found the problem.
I’ve been cussin’ too dang much. (And/or, Google just upped its standards in that area.)
To put that more technically, many savvy observers believe that curse words negative affect your search-engine optimization (SEO). In theory, that’s not supposed to be true. In practice, it appears to be true. And the only thing that stands out about my most recent posts is frequent (but humor-focused) use of swear words.
Google search generates more-or-less all of my referred traffic, so the only plausible explanation for the drop is that something has put me on Google’s bad side. Upon re-reading my most recent output, the gratuitous curse words stood out as the likely culprit.
An alternative explanation is that Google’s August 2024 update to its search algorithm found something else that it didn’t like about me. Turns out, quite a few websites saw a big decline in traffic just about the same day mine did. In theory, if I can cut through the technical barriers, there is a way for me to use the Google Search Console to see if there’s an issue. But that requires modifying the website and/or the DNS listing, neither of which I particularly want to do.
The lesson is that if our monopoly provider of search services takes a dislike to you, you’re toast. Whatever Google decides more-or-less determines how the internet runs.
Google giveth, and Google taketh away.
I’ve now gone back and cleaned up the past couple of weeks’ worth of postings. I’m hoping for the best.
We’ll see if Google can find it in her heart to forgive me. Whatever it was that I did to offend her.
