Googality and Frugality

This search engine optimisation gubbins is a minefield. So much so that I half expect a bunch of paps to be merrily snapping Heather Mills sporting a protective visor next to a Google search box. Meta Tags this, keywords that, back links the other. It's all designed to mystify and exasperate. Thanks to the superfluous function of Google Hot Trends, I know that some rising-through-the-ranks stand up comedian is the third most popular search term. Bet he says "fuck" a lot. Of course, there's always Google AdWords...."Google AdWords; monetizing grammar since 2007 to fund our virtual reality canteen, if you don't mind."

Unfortunately, this isn't the face of someone who'd spend an inordinate amount of Wonkana moulah bidding for combinations of words that some chump might just type in and then click on our site.Nothing is free these days, not even words. Who'll show me £35 for anti disestablishmentarianism ? Sold to the gentleman holding the word "gullible" aloft.

It's an in exacting science, this SEO lark. And let's face it, there's nothing very in exacting about science. It makes about as much sense as Thomas steadfastly refusing to have doubts and Judas demonstrating great acts of loyalty. I am an AdWord heretic.

Little wonder, given one "expert" told me you should never bid for the most popular word(s) but target number 3 or 4 on the list. It's designed to baffle. And it's powered by Google. When it comes to riding high in the search results (and much to a web designer's chagrin) you're ever so slightly in the lap of the Gods.

"Google could have just changed their algorithm", I heard one Venture Capitalist explain to an enraptured symposium. Can we actually be certain there was ever such an algorithm in the first place? (Who's to say it wasn't long division or numerical solutions of Equations and Interpolation?)

They'll tell you anything, these technorati. If you Googled "Google algorithm" would it even be on the first page? The sensible money says you'll stumble across the two words in a completely unrelated context on page 17 of the results, just below "amoeba masturbationcam".

I.T. is a bluffer's trade if you ask me. Always dealing in the abstract, never the concrete; that's the way they like it. It keeps them comfortable. Leading you up the proverbial garden path with unresolvable statements, answers that sound like questions and muttering the on screen prompts under their breath to sound proficient.

" What's the Google Algorithm? " you should ask some time, just to throw a spanner in the works. Or a Google bot in the Meta Whatsit. See our stuff at this address

http://www.wonkanaproductions.com/

Beats paying.