Category: Rants

Adding Sense To It All

There was a time when you could go to a search engine and get the information you wanted first try. This was the time when Google was really the top of the line for the internet savvy. You could find anything you wanted.

It was a time when you submitted your site to a search engine and they checked it for content to decide if you were good enough to add to their search engine. If you were lucky enough to get approved for their engine you would be easily found and would be assured plenty of visitors.

It wasn’t just google.. All search engines were by submission only. You had to sometimes wait 6 weeks or so to be added. But it was worth the wait to see your site show up under the search terms from your meta tags and content. In those days my site grew from a small one person site to hundreds and thousands of pages of poems…

DreamersReality.com got so many hits I could not keep up with the old hand written html coding I was doing on the poems. I was getting sometime a couple dozen poem submissions a day. With the onslaught of visitors I had to have the help of a friend to switch the working of my site to a more workable and timesaving database form.

That seems to be where things changed. About the time I finished getting my site upgraded to be able to handle all the flow of new talented writers Google made a change..The added Adsense to the scene.

The original reason I created my site was so that I didn’t have to have ads on my site taking away from the content. So the writing on the site would be the centerpiece of the site, not some unsightly ad for some other company. So I did not evolve into putting junk ads all over my site.. I had offers from time to time to time from the online casinos and other places. It was due to  havingt I has such high traffic stats on my site.

But times were changing.. For some reason when I changed over to my data bases even though I had a redirect to the new pages, Google decided it no longer thought this top ten website was worth promoting.. Could it have been because I did not choose to add their ads to my site to junk it up with commercialism hoping to make a buck.

It seems that it was not just my site that had these things happen.. It is harder and harder to find a site with real content these days. You have to weed through all the sites, (and I use that term loosely) that  have nothing but ads and links to other sites. Some with no content on them at all; just other links to more non-content sites. So you go back to Google and look for the next link that seems to have the content you are looking for, Then what do you get? A front page locked into “you are not a member you must first register before you can view this site”..

One incidence, when I was checking to see if anyone was linking to me, one site had taken one of my poems without permission from my site and put on their own.  I could tell due to the words from the beginning of my poem were in the search description.. When I clicked on the link it took me to a site that was an ad for a book that had a collection of poetry on it.. What?? not only could I not get in to see where my poems were being used and advertised in the search engine, but they were using them to make a profit too. Was there a contact link? Nope just a page with links and ads on them.. Maybe it was a scam to get money out of concerned writers. And maybe it was just a draw to get you to click on their link.

Was the site only using the content of my poem because it had gotten so many hits on my webpage that by using the beginning of my poem they were hoping to get hits on their ads and get their ranking higher.. Well they achieved both. Their site with my website name and the beginning of my poem was ranked higher in the search engines than mine with the original open and viewable content.. Of course they had plenty of Google Adsense on their site. Tell me is there something wrong with that or is it just me?

This is happening with lots of sites. Every time I go to search for something I find this same misdirection happening.. The search engine description looks like it has the content only to get there and find usually none at all or a bunch of random writing that makes no sense or a page full of clickable ads, with no content at all.

Hard to believe these are the top 10 sites on the Google search engine now. But they are..

I can find many more of my content rich pages.listed on Yahoo and Ask.com. even Msn beat out Google. And actually Ask.com, the little guy in the race has the most pages of my website linked in. I find it much easier to find what I am looking for on the not so popular search engines.

I have tried to play some of the games Google has designed. I made a robots site map, and loaded it to their sitemap page.. I deliberately left out the pages from a near dead portion of my site forum.. Do you think it helped? Not a bit. I was later told that if I removed the, now near, useless meta tags that would help.. nope.. that didn’t help either.

One day I got excited I seen that Google has spidered my site and added a couple hundred pages of my site.. So I went to see what was added. And would you believe it was the pages I wanted ignored from the old forum. Not the content from the site.. Not any of the 6000 + poems.. Just forum chit chat of no real relevance except to the friends that once frequented the site years ago.

A friend of mine decided to give adsense a try.. and in the last year he has make maybe $5 dollars. Woo Hoo.. I guess you have to be a abuser of the technology in order to make any real money. Sorry it’s not for me.

I have pretty much given up on Google.. I rarely use them for any searches anymore. I want content, not ads to waste my time.. When I am searching, I want to search, find, and get on with my day..

Google has turned into a big time wasting search engine full of so much gobbly goop with all that adsense it has forgotten that as a search engine it needs to focus on the search outcome quality….

But then that would… add sense .

categories Commentaries, Rants | | datetime September 21, 2007 1:11 am | comments Comments (0)

War on Lack of Responsibility

When I grew up things were different than they are now. Our parents were responsible for how their children acted. If their children did things that were not right they faced the consequences of the law. Back then if your child got out of line you could send them out to the local tree to get a switch that would then be used on their bottoms to remind them of the responsibility of their actions. Sometimes the search for the switch that was going to be used on their bottoms was much more traumatic and lesson learning, than the switching they were going to get.

Though I rarely ever remember being spanked as a child. (when I did I knew it was deserved) just a belt hanging over the door handle of my mother and father’s bedroom door was a firm reminder of what “could” happen if I decided to break the rules and forgot that I was responsible for my behaviors.

Working with the public in customer service I work on accounts of dozens of people every day that do not want accept the responsibility for their actions on uses for their phones.. . It is the same in all companies that deal with the public.

People call in everyday having used services that they did not pay for in their plans and get angry with our company because they are charged for using the services at a higher rate.. It doesn’t matter that it is in the contract they signed when they got their phones. “Who reads those?”, is what I hear every time it is mentioned. The sales people that sell them the phones are paid on commission.. So they were offered the money saving features and the people turn them down.. Or just didn’t listen and use the features anyway.

They hand the phone over to a child or teenager and don’t tell them what they can do and not do with their phones and then expect our company to flip the bill for their misuse of the service or for their children’s choice to disobey what their parents.. Many feel we should continue giving them free phones anytime they want them. Or let them out of their contracts for free because they no longer agree with what was in the contract they signed. “Who has time to read those things” So we cater to the less then responsible people and then people wonder whose fault it is when the prices of services go up.. The company still has to make a profit despite paying for all those people who feel it is the companies responsibility to pay for their irresponsible behaviors.

Another look at responsibility is a story I read lately in a military news letter. Three boys from one family that joined the military all went AWOL during basic training while on  Christmas holiday leave.. One that was caught, while breaking a law, said he didn’t like being yelled at by the Drill Sergeant to pick up garbage he left on a seat. He said they didn’t know they would have to learn to use guns and might have to go to war. One met a girl over the holiday and couldn’t bare to leave her. So he changed his mind about doing his duty that he signed on to do. Forsaking his pledge his honor and contract for a weekend romance. What a prize that girl has. Please.. They all went AWOL at the same time and yet claim they didn’t know the other 2 brothers were doing the same thing. Imagine that.

They claimed the recruiter lied and told them they would most likely not have to go to war. And they didn’t know they would have to use guns. They were going to be mechanics. They were shocked when their Drill Sergeant told them they would be going to Iraq. So it is the recruiters fault they signed on the dotted line and took an oath to serve our country. It is the recruiters fault these boys suddenly forgot all the war movies they watched over the years, their GI Joes and military playstation games that all show that soldiers that are in the military and fight in wars.

I have to wonder who they think they are fooling with their wimpy attitudes and lack of responsibility.. Not to mention their lies.

I would love to take a survey of boys and or girls of any age; say 5 and above. Ask them what a GI Joe is, what does he do, and what does he come with (as accessories).

These boys who went AWOL feel it was fully okay to just walk out on their oaths their contracts, and their country saying they didn’t realize what they were getting into and take no responsibility for their actions. Why should they not be held to their contracts in some way.. They don’t want to go to war fine let them serve the rest of their contract filling pot holes, picking up garbage on post or cleaning toilets or some other nice safe job with a reduction in pay due to their irresponsible choices. There used to be punishment for going AWOL hard labor.. Not any more… Looks like they will get a slap on the hand. Then again why make them famous with some anti war group making them rich as spokes people for a un-win-able cause..

I have to wonder how early this lack of responsibility starts these days. Is it the lack of a mother staying home to care for their children?. Is it the one parent households? Is it the school system that puts the picked on kids in counseling while the bullies continue to walk around picking on them? Or does it come from the lack of switches and unused reminder belts hanging over the door knobs?

What happened to taking responsibility for ones own actions. Are there no ethics in society anymore.

Whose Responsibility is it? Everyone who sits back and watches it happen without at least trying to make a difference.. The silent majority just let it happen and then ask why.

categories Rants | | datetime June 9, 2007 12:55 am | comments Comments (1)

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