SEO, for those of you who don't know and/or don't care, stands for Search Engine Optimization. People who are interested in driving traffic to their websites have all these different techniques to, essentially, "game" Google's search engine rankings in an attempt to get on the first page of searches (in the top ten results of a search) for a word or phrase.

If you happen to be selling something, it is to your advantage to get high search engine ranking, because most searchers can't be bothered to click past the first page or two of listings. So there's always been all this big brouhaha to use various means to increase your page's rank. Ideally Google wants you to offer your readers relevant, cogent content that might actually answer a question--for example, I tend to show up very high if people are searching for the story of Dorothy Sparks and Rocky Gorge, since (much to my continued amazement) I am one of the very few people who have actually wrote about it. (And no doubt YOU have never heard of Dorothy Sparks, either, unless you obsessively read the Craptacular and/or you have recently vacationed along the Kancamagus Highway in New Hampshire. I get a lot of hits for Dorothy during NH's foliage season.)

Google, in its quest to have its searches actually deliver relevant and worthwhile results for the searcher, has a very complex algorithm it uses (and changes) to determine if a particular web page does indeedy have something to do with the phrase being looked for. In the infancy of the internet, it looked mostly at the text of the HTML code, which includes both what you see on the screen and behind the scenes, so to speak. And that's where the gaming began.  MORE Mojo! »

Okay, in the spirit of full disclosure, Mojo was never a huge fan of the movie version of The da Vinci Code. Probably because a) she was never that HUGE a fan of the book, and b) she has a Certain Cruel Prejudice Against Suckitude. I seem to recall calling the movie version something like "the dullest thriller I have ever seen". Unlike the book, which, not very good as it is, nonetheless hooks you on the first page as they teach you in Writing Genre Novels 101.  MORE Mojo! »

Okay, so I hate American Idol--hate hate HATE it--as I do just about each and every "reality" show out there. Don't watch 'em, think they're one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, downfall of society as we know it, turns your mind to mush, all that stuff. I can't even stand the freakin' COMMERCIALS. The only thing I like about it is the mean guy, Simon, whose sole job is apparently to introduce delusional people to the concept of Reality. And that's only from watching clips of various train wrecks that happen to make the news and/or the commercials. I've always suspected Simon is one of those crusty realists who hides the proverbial heart o' gold behind his snarkiness, but I digress.

Having said that, with all the current brouhaha over the British version of the show--which also has the Simon guy on it--I finally broke down this morning and went over to youtube to watch the Susan Boyle clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnmbJzH93NU

If you haven't watched it, you really should. Once in a while, even reality television gets it right and does good.

Even Mojo, vicious, vicious creature that she is, got--okay, maybe just a little--choked up.

Mojo

So this weekend the stars aligned and the Universe smiled upon Mojo with the sort of smile that seems genuine at first, but once you commit yourself to the cause you realize--way too late--it was actually a sadistic giggling sort of smile really meant for all of his puerile buddies at your expense. Because there are certain movies that come out that are so quickly panned they disappear from the box office and NEVER appear at the two-dollar movie theater.  MORE Mojo! »

So I'm doing the rounds, like I do periodically, and I discover this whole brouhaha going on that I was blissfully unaware of. It seems a couple of months ago some chuckleheaded simpletons did something really, really stupid and perhaps slimy (depending on the version you read) and managed to cheese off a very large online community. Words were exchanged, stupid people attempted to hide their stupidity, which made things worse as always, escalation, snowball, yelling and screaming, he said, she said, Hitler, your mother....the usual Internet flamewar explosion, like can be seen all over the place. Nothing new there. I won't go into the specifics because they really don't matter in the long run. Unless you were personally involved. Then of course it matters a Whole Bunch.  MORE Mojo! »