Magnolia Whelks and Miserable Failures

Getting yourself noticed.

My bipedal yeomen, the rather horrible truth is that I am stuck for a topic today. After following a set of instructions to make coloured egg bread, I appear to have decimated the kitchen and traumatised the cat. I almost wavered and gave you the link to enable you to have your own attempt, but there is enough suffering in the world already. Besides, I think that you have to be some kind of contortionist to make the stuff properly.

Yet again, I digress. In my search for a topic, I went to the BBC News website and started a leisurely surf. I wasn’t to be disappointed. I came across an article discussing “Google Bombs”. Now excuse me for the moment if I don’t give you any links, but I have my reasons. (Note 1)

Now hands up any curious yeomen who have entered their own names into Google to see what pops up? Quite a few of you, I would imagine. This could be because my imagination is impaired this morning and I am jumping to this conclusion based on the fact that I quite regularly indulge. Sadly, when I enter my name, the Senior Lecturer in organic chemistry at the University of Kent tops the list.

It could be a trick of the synapses, but I think I have known about the manipulation of search engines for some time. In the ‘olden days’ of the internet you could raise your site up the listings by repeating keywords on your page. I also knew that nowadays the search engines are more sophisticated and fooling them required more art.

I also knew that up until recently, if you entered “miserable failure” into Google and hit the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button it would take you here.

I just didn’t connect the two until I read this article on Google Bombs.

Once the connection was made though, I’m afraid my mischievous streak kicked in. (Note 2)

If it really is that simple to fool the search engines, why don’t we give it a try?

I have a cunning plan - a geeky quest if you will.

We all choose a colour – I’ve chosen magnolia because it goes with my slippers. Then we all add the word ‘whelk’ to that colour. Then we simply add a link to each other’s homepage under that title. So, a link to my page would be labelled Magnolia Whelk.

Before you know it we should be enter our coloured whelks into Google and see our names high up the search results! By that I mean entering ‘magnolia whelk’ into Google will see my 360 page in the results – who knows, maybe even top of the results!

So, leave a comment under this entry stating your chosen colour and I will add the links – just remember to return the favour and link to my 360 page with the label Magnolia Whelk.

Would you look at that, the colour nominations are coming in already!

Liss has decided that she is Magenta Whelk.
Lookwhatthecatdragged in is Periwinkle Whelk.
Mousepotato is Shocking Pink Whelk.
Blogiversarry girl, Kerry is Asparagus Green Whelk.
Sean is Burnt Umber Whelk.
Lee is Crimson Whelk.
Stu is Caspian Blue Whelk.
BJ is Vivacious Violet Whelk.
Eskimo is Ember Whelk.
Ali R is Turquoise Whelk.
Gypsy is Sage Green Whelk.
Chloe is Ocean Whelk.
Fuzzy Slippers is Aubergine Whelk.
Karma Chimera is Puce Whelk.
OK, that’s it – the list is closed for now!

Now I better be off and have a dried frog pill. I have this horrible feeling that this post made no sense at all.

From 14th June 2006, the industry standard Crozzy Standard has been applied to footnotes.

NOTE 1: Well, as I just wandered off to go do some little chore, I thought about this and decided that there isn’t any good reason why I don’t share with you a link to explain Google Bomb. There you go then, that was a link. Looking back at the text, I have totally forgotten what I was going to write. My brain is away on a different planet this morning. Perhaps I should wander off and dribble aimlessly in a cornerClick to return

NOTE 2: It is probably a shock for you to learn that I have a mischievous streak. Thankfully, I keep it very well hidden and hardly ever act upon it. If I did you would find me visiting your pages leaving strange or cryptic notes. On really bad days, when the haemorrhoids goblin is out and about tweaking the low hanging fruit, I have been known to deliberately grab at the wrong end of sticks or flirt outrageously. Click to return

TECHNORATI TAGS : potato ; Google ; Waffle ; Bomb ;whimsy ; Magnolia ; Whelk.