This weeks Girl Geek Dinner (which is more snacks than actual dinner) is about Women in Technology and breaking down the barriers. Another topic on the blog and elsewhere has been about the perception of women in technology. Lisa had a great interview published and it got me to thinking about some stuff I’ve had happen to me lately. We are different, apparently, us female SEOs. I did miss the memo and so when I’ve been reminded, it’s always been a shock. I’m not sure what it is, but somehow my DNA must have an anti-tech bent to it so that as a woman, I cannot possibly be good at anything technical. Or reading map directions. So I suppose the [...]
Archive for August, 2007
IT’s Not Always About Intent
I learned a valuable lesson recently (yes, just one)…most things in life are not about intent, they’re about reaction. My mouth once again got me into trouble last week, as I said something that was interpreted totally differently than I had intended. However, I can now easily see why it was, unfortunately. Considering my first post for this blog was about knowing your audience and relating to them in terms of their culture, this was a mistake that I should not have made but I have definitely learned from it. In much the same way, intent is difficult to determine in what you do on the web. Everyone’s favorite Viking (and if she isn’t, she darn well should be) had [...]
Private Matters
Is how a search engine handles your private data going to soon determine whether or not you use it? In a recent decision, Ask.com has told users that it will no longer store data on their queries. This sounds very nice of course, until you get down into the nitty gritty of it and learn that it’s almost meaningless. So basically, for those of you who like to conduct searches on items such as men’s girdles, rare Adam and the Ants singles, and BASIC programming guides, you should still be a little worried that your user data could haunt you at some point (this is excluding how it simply affects you to know what Adam looks like these days.) Here’s [...]
- August 7th 2007
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I’m In Ur Brain, Stealin Ur Sekrets– And Tellin’ Da Wurld
That’s right… It’s conference time again for me so I need stuff to talk about. Of course, since I was unable to procure that Time-Life series on unlocking the untold power of my mind, I’m afraid that I was simply being a bit of an old-timer g33k there. For those of you who remember that commercial, I apologise if you were concurrently consuming a beverage. If you use some cloths and cleaner before it dries, it should be OK. I love speaking at conferences but I’m always worried that I have nothing of any value to say. I look at people like Rand Fishkin, Graywolf, evilgreenmonkey, and others and wonder what I could possibly contribute to a room full of [...]
This Post Will Self-Destruct in 30 Seconds
Nothing in this field ever stays the same. What’s considered white-hat becomes black-hat, the engines like a hyphenated URL one day and then it starts to look spammy, Coldfusion is no longer cool (was it ever?), and stupid is the new clever. Google’s latest major algorithm change is apparently responsible for the loss of massive amounts of traffic to some really large sites. The 28% drop that Answers.com reported has been all over the news, both in the industry and outside of it. I think my mother even asked me to express my opinion on it. OK she didn’t, but I wouldn’t have fallen over in shock if she had. Well yes I would have but you get my drift…everyone [...]
If You Like Inaccuracy, You’ll LOVE Alexa!
Alexa.com is regarded by many people as an authority. However, if you’ve been reading a lot of SEO blogs recently you’ll know that many of us in the industry are fed up with this site and its utter lack of accuracy. Save everyone some time and read this Slashdot article for an excellent piece on just how bad Alexa really is. I couldn’t have put this any better. So therein lies the issue of what else to use for internet measurements? Alexa may be the name that everyone knows, but it certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on this type of information. There ARE alternatives. OK there are TWO free alternatives that I found that seem even remotely decent (meaning they [...]