Michael Buffington

Goodbye Google Rankings

Monday, December 08 2003

I don’t know, I guess it was a few days ago I spent about 23.4 seconds making a fix that I should have done years ago to my blog. I made the URLs Search Engine Friendly, or SEF for those who work for a corporation like Xerox where if it isn’t an acronym, it’s indistinguishable from any other combination of random words.

So how does this benefit me? I’m not even sure, but everyone has been doing it for years, and I have this sneaky fear that if I don’t conform I’ll be made fun of. Also, I’ve noticed that certain sites seem to rank much higher in Google than this here site (deep southern accent), even though this here site has far more incoming links.

Seriously, search for sore neck, and you get toottoot.org in slot three. This isn’t right! As far as I know, toottoot.org has been around for only a few months, and has no one linking to it. It’s one of Google’s biggest flaws in my opinion. But whatever, now I’m going to go after a slice of that tasty pie because I have SEF!

But, since I’ve tugged the very mesh that holds my site together in Google’s eyes right out, I’m afraid that Google is going to freak out. I left the old URLs in tact to keep any old links working from the outside world, but I’m not sure if that will be good enough for Google when it comes calling. I’ve gritted my teeth, furrowed my brow, and have resigned to losing my Google rankings entirely, with the thought that perhaps it will turn back around, and work out better in the future.