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
- I still have no clue.
- I still have no firm idea of how to get a clue.
- In the meantime, I’ve gotten in bed with the Devil.
Speak of the Devil
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:
- Google appears to have found massive problems with my website,
- But I can’t quite figure out what the hell Google is talking about.
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.
A deeper philosophical issue
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.
