Google ranking, a self defeating approach

by | Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Matt Koehler has an interesting post (Keeping track of the Koehlers) about his attempts to rise in Google’s rankings for searches on his last name. In the last few months he seems to have had some success judging that he has moved from page 25 to somewhere in the 3-4 range. So to keep a record of this (self admittedly) silly and vain pursuit he has created a page to track the other “Koehlers” in the world wide web (see here.) So on this page he lists all the Koehlers (corporations and individuals) ahead of him in the rankings and those that he has recently passed on his rapid rise.

And what is funny is that he provides links to all these different Koehlers!

Now here’s a self-defeating idea if there ever was one. By providing links to other Koehler’s websites, isn’t Matt raising their Google ranking, and thus helping them move ahead of him. So by making this list Matt is undermining the very cause he is trying to fight for!

So I would argue, the smart thing to do, in this situation, is to not create such a page at all, and if you have to create one, make sure that you don’t provide links.

Speaking for myself, I must admit that given my name, landing up on page 25 of a Google search is not an issue I have to think much about. There just aren’t enough names like “Punya” and “Punya Mishra” in the world. Though truth be told (I can be as silly and vain as the other guy), my ranking on searches for “Mishra” does leave a lot to be desired! There is this certain author — and we share the same first initial as well, no I am not providing a link 🙂 — whom I am not going to overtake in a long time. And there is this faculty member, with the same last name (who shall remain nameless and linkless, thank you) that I would love to rise above.

[Incidentally in his search for his name, Matt does not seem to have run into any googlegangers, at least not yet. Coming across another Matt Koehler would be interesting because each of them has the right to argue for their site to be ranked higher than the other person’s. I wonder how they will resolve that conundrum. Hmmm…

Topics related to this post: Fun | Personal | Technology

A few randomly selected blog posts…

TPACK newsletter #4, Aug – Sept 09


Welcome to the fourth edition of the TPACK Newsletter, now with 494 subscribers (representing a 36% increase during the last four months!), and appearing bimonthly between August and April. If you are not sure what TPACK is, please surf over to www.tpack.org...

By the numbers

Today's NYTimes story about an economist ranking art by the numbers (see A Textbook Example of Ranking Artworks) bothered me a bit. As the article says, David Galenson's method is based not on the aesthetic qualities of the artwork but rather on "how frequently an...

My ambigram design in Brain Games TV show

I am a huge fan of the show Brain Games on the National Geographic channel. Brain Games focuses on the workings of the brain and the reasons we do what we do. The show is quite creative about how they explain ideas, using a range of techniques games, visual illusions...

Creativity as Resistance: New article

Creativity as Resistance: New article

Image credit: tshirtgifter.com The next article in our series (Rethinking technology and creativity for the 21st century) for the journal Tech Trends is now available online. This article has an interview with Dr. Shakuntala Banaji, currently Associate Professor and...

Innovation in hybrid/blended doctoral courses

The July 2014 issue of Tech Trends has two articles co-authored by me. The first is part of our ongoing series of articles on Rethinking technology and creativity in the 21st century (you can find the more recent article here and the complete series here). The other...

Distributed creativity

Re-Public: re•imagining democracy, an online journal focusing on innovative developments in contemporary political theory and practice, has a special issue devoted to Distributed Creativity and Design. This may be a useful resource for my Learning technology by design...

A NEW definition of creativity: Next article in series

The latest in our series Rethinking Technology and Creativity in the 21st Century is now available. The article was co-authored with Danah Henriksen (and the Deep-Play Research Group) and it titled: A NEW approach to defining and measuring creativity. In this article...

Using eclipses to see

Let me start with two questions: First, what is the shape of the Earth? And two, what shapes does the sun cast on the ground when filtered through the leaves of a tree? Of course we know the answer to the first question. The pictures from space show clearly this...

Facebook Username

I now have a facebook username! Hah! Check out http://www.facebook.com/punyamishra/

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *