Bill Cammack

Bill Cammack = "Bill #4" Today On Google, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Bill Cammack – Google results for “Bill” on November 04, 2008

It seems that Google has changed their “two entries per site” layout, at least for this morning. IMDB only has one and Wikipedia only has one, so that puts me at #4 for now, behind Bill Gates’ Microsoft entry.

Happy Election Day!!!! :D

A lot of guys are paranoid that they’re going to lose their women or that they’re going to cheat on them with the next man. Those days are over. There’s a new sheriff in town… A new menace, threatening the raps and relationships of guys across the country and throughout the entire world. This menace needs to be recognized and STOPPED IN ITS TRACKS before it’s able to take down all of human civilization….

Fellaz!!! Gather together in UNITY, against our COMMON ENEMY!!!

TECH!!! :(

Morpheus: We don’t know who struck first. Us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power. It was believed they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun……

Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony…..

Now, I know you’re probably laughing and you think The Kid’s trippin’, but hold on to your hats. I have evidence! :D

I didn’t think anything of it at the time… but NINE MONTHS AGO, back in January, 2008, I was at a TweetUp and tried to take this picture:

Now… Joyce, Julia, Jesse and myself are all looking right at the camera. That would appear to indicate that the photographer had called everyone’s attention to the fact that a picture was about to be taken… But Wait A Minute!!!… Where’s LAURA looking? That’s right… at TECH. Now, in case you thought she wasn’t AWARE that a picture was being taken, look how she has that “I’m about to be in a picture” smile on her face… YET she CAIN’T tear herself away from TECH to fully engage the photographer with everyone else. :/

Like I said, I didn’t think anything of it at the time. It was just a funny aspect of one of my myriad Flickr pictures.

So fast forward six months to June, 2008. I go to a NNN / Tumblr Rock Band party, and I’m trying to talk to Michelle:

BOOM! Look at that! TECH rears its ugly head again! See the disparity? A brotha’z gettin’ his DRINK on, and a sistah’z gettin’ her TECH on! You see where this is going? This is a serious problem, guys. :(

So a couple of weeks later, still in June 2008, (even though Mike jacked up the shot, and you can’t see the TECH), I’m trying to get Lux’s attention, but nooooooooo… TECH wins AGAIN! :(

So the last straw, and where I realized this post needed to be written, was three months after that, in September, 2008. I attended TechSet, and Bryan wanted to take a picture of Chrissie & The Kid:

Photo by Bryan Thatcher

Notice how I’m already posing, the shot is already framed and the flash is mounted on the camera and working properly. Meanwhile, Chrissie’s FULL ATTENTION is on TECH, except for the motor skills she’s siphoned off to tell me something that was probably “Right after I finish Twittering…” :/

Now, to all of my friends’ credit, I have great, non-Tech-cockblocked pictures with Michelle, Lux, Laura AND Chrissie, hahaha :D Still… The problem has been REVEALED and must be ADDRESSED!

If your girl seems distant, do NOT blame the next man… blame TECH! :(
If your girl is late to meet you somewhere, BLAME TECH!
If your girl doesn’t show up AT ALL, it’s probably because TECH changed the location in her calendar application.
If your girl doesn’t answer her phone, it’s probably because TECH is redirecting *YOUR* calls to her voicemail.
Every time your girlfriend “dialed you with her ass”, that was TECH calling you up to inform you how good a time she was having WITHOUT. YOU!

Get the picture? Guys, we have GOT to band together, before it’s too late!!!

If you STILL don’t believe me… Did you notice that the next big thing is called… ANDROID?

Check these guys out! hahaha “Hi ………… Wel Come To Moun Tain View California…… I Am Spea King Here At Goo Gle’s Headquarters” hahaha

I guarantee you the android phones will steal their women, ASAP. Watch! :D

Go ahead and keep sleeping, dudes, but when it happens TO YOU… Just remember that The Kid warned you to keep your girl FAR. AWAY. FROM. TECH!

If she wants to go to Cancun with her girlfriends, no problem. If she wants to get a new Tech Gadget, *VETO* that ish WITH THA QUICKNEZZ!!! :D

~Bill

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Bill Cammack Retirement Visitor Map, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Recent Visitor Map for BillCammack.com – October 15, 2008

Bill Cammack hereby officially retires from the Google / Stats game. :) I’ve had enough. I’m bored. I’m going to do other stuff.

On November 12, 2007, BillCammack.com arrived on page 4 of Google’s search results for the word “Bill” or “bill”.

It may have been there before that, but I can’t claim that, because that’s the first day that I noticed it, so we’ll roll with it from there.

Sometime around that point is when I consolidated my three blogs into one location:

ReelSolid.TV: Video Blog
DatingGenius: Dating Advice / Commentary
DeMux: Digital Video / Social Media

My dating blog, DatingGenius, was originally supposed to be a video blog that I was going to do as a component of a group that I created on Steve Woolf & Zadi Diaz’s mix.epicfu.com (which at the time was mix.jetsetshow.com), called “Don’t Try This At Home”. I started out with text, because it was easier to do, but never made the transition to video.

My social media blog was originally housed on Fast Company, as I was one of the “Fast Company Expert Bloggers” for over a year. On January 2, 2008, I posted this pic from being featured in “Best of the FC Blogs: Business Trends of 2007″:

My video blog, ReelSolid.TV was the main reason I started blogging at all. In fact, I DIDN’T start blogging. I only created a blog because at the time, that was the only way to serve my videos to my iTunes feed:

ReelSolidTV Episode 25: The Harlem Renaissance 5-Mile Classic Road Race

So anyway… After I consolidated my material into categories on one site… On February 15, 2008, exactly 8 months ago, I arrived on page 1 of the Google search results for “Bill”, just making it to #10, right behind “Bill of Rights”:

I thought that this was amazing and probably a fluke, since I was listed at search result #10 out of 42,000,000 (42 Million) English pages for “bill”. I took my screenshot and didn’t think much else about it.

On April 20, 2008, I was actually the #3 search result for “Bill”, but that was out of only 29,700,000 pages, so most likely, Google was in the process of changing the way they rate sites. I don’t know how things work over there, but I pretty much got used to 43 Million pages, so anything vastly deviating from that number indicated to me (as an uneducated opinion, haha) that changes were being made, and eventually it would return to 43,000,000 and then I could judge my standings properly again:

At that point, I was only behind Wikipedia, which was actually a combination of ALL of their pages that reference “Bill”. Since Google shows you the top two entries, Bill Gates & Bill Clinton were the “only two” Bills ahead of me. As a matter of fact, they WEREN’T ahead of me, because you can see that right behind my entry is Bill Gates’ entry from Microsoft.com and then the movie “Kill Bill” from imdb and then the biography of Bill Clinton. So, head-to-head, I was the #1 Bill in the world at the time.

On July 18th, 2008, BillCammack.com disappeared COMPLETELY from the Google listings:

I blogged about this situation in:
1) What if YOU get removed from Google?
2) Whose Fault Is This? (UnGoogled Blog Day 03)?
3) Google restores Bill Cammack site (UnGoogled Blog Day 04)

I fixed the issue, and was back in position four days after being removed:

At this point, as you can see, hahahaha the number of entries for “Bill” had ballooned to 390,000,000 (read: More than a quarter of a BILLION English pages! :D ), and I was currently #7.

More importantly, the two key players in “Bill” had been clearly established. Wikipedia’s collection of “Bill” pages and IMDB’s collection of movies that reference the word “Bill” have remained the top two entries to this day. Since they get two references each, the highest I can possibly get with BillCammack.com is #5. This is where I was on August 04, 2008:

At this point, slots #5 and #6 are usually taken up by the Bill Gates biography from Microsoft.com and a book about Bill Gates on “Google Books”.

So that’s it. I’m done. I’m bored. Other than 4 days, which I’ve documented in links above, Bill Cammack has been on Google’s page 1 for “Bill” for a solid eight (8) months, from February 15, 2008 to October 15, 2008. I don’t care anymore. It doesn’t float my boat. :)

Here’s what the stats look like right now:

This is the circular doom of the overachiever. Choose a goal, crush it, move on to the next thing. *yawn*. I’m going to be a Rock Star now. When I’m done with that, I’ll do something else.

out.

~Bill

Bill Can’t Get Closer Than #7 on Google!, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Bill Cammack – #7 Google result out of 560,000,000 pages for “Bill”

ok… This is getting out of hand. If they make like ONE MORE Bill Gates page, I’m finna get squeezed right off the bottom of page 1! grrr :/

Nobody better make any Bill Gates ACTION MOVIES, LUNCHBOXES, MEMOIRS, CAR INTERIORS… NOTHING! :D

Stop hogging the real estate, dude! :D

Today’s "Bill" Google Standings, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Bill Cammack in slot #5 of 388,000,000 English pages for "Bill".

… Actually, slot #3, since #1 and #2 are both IMDB and #3 and #4 are both Wikipedia…

But who’s counting? :D

For a couple of months, I billed myself as a “Social Media Expert”, which I am. :D

I removed that title because in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t say anything specific or useful about me. It was mostly “Keeping up with the Joneses”. I would look at people billing themselves as SMEs and go “um… if THAT PERSON’S an expert, I’m FOR DAMNED SURE an expert!” hahahaha :D

I stopped thinking about it a long time ago, but today, I read an interesting article by Jeremy Pepper, entitled “Taking Stock – Can Social Media Do What It Claims?” that’s briefly rekindled my interest in the topic. Amongst some other interesting things, Jeremy writes:

“JP: … While people are glomming onto social media, there seems to be very little being done in the circular nature of the social media consultants.

You don’t hear/read about campaigns that are helping change the world. You don’t hear/read about campaigns that are being done with the large agencies or consultants that are trying to help make the world a better place.

You read social media people talking about social media … and that seems to be it. It’s the self-fulfilling prophecy of Valleywag’s 250. And, I have written about this before, and nothing much changes.”

Jeremy then goes on to name a few Echo Chamber Bigwigs and he gives some suggestions for useful things they might do with their massive numbers of followers on various social media sites.

As I looked at his list and what he was suggesting that these people do, I was reminded of my post from four months ago, entitled “Content / Production Value / Popularity”. As a content creator, I’ve been very interested in how people acquire followings and what they utilize their fan base for. By March 2008, when I wrote C/Pv/P it was clear to me “what’s going on around here”. :D

And, yes…. This is getting back to the point of what this has to do with Jeremy’s post. :D

What’s going on around here is that people are trying to sell stuff. Period. There are two ways to do this, but they end up at the same destination. The first way is to create content that people like and enjoy and pass on to their friends, who then become viewers and hopefully PASSIONATE viewers and carry the flag for you to their towns, cities and countries all over the world. If you look at the videos from when DiggNation came to NYC and there were lines all up, down and around the block of nothing but excited FANS, FANS, and more FANS, that’s a prime example.

The other way to “sell stuff” is to base your show or site around someone that comes with a pre-fab fan base. If you don’t understand this, it’s often confusing when you see people with LESS TALENT brought on board when there are people with obviously WAY MORE TALENT available for the project. For instance, let’s say someone’s a way better musician/producer than I am, but they don’t have any social media props. If you put the two of us up for the same project (read “selling stuff” inside the Echo Chamber), you can either HOPE that people will like his/her music, and it will catch on, OR you can go with what you know, which is that I currently have 993 Twitter followers, 734 Facebook “friends”, 636 Myspace friends, etc, etc, and Google loves to Nom Nom on everything that I do, so you can find me at the top of the search results for Bill (#5 of 388,000,000), NYC dating (#7 of 309,000), video editor resume (#2 of 802,000) and Emmy Award Editor (#1 for my resume and #2 for my Indy Mogul episode, out of 612,000 English pages).

So when you look at it for what it is, what counts inside the Echo Chamber (aka the Fishbowl) is “reach”, or perhaps how much of a built-in marketing machine the person brings to the table and *NOT*…. I repeat… *NOT* their ability to make anything that remotely resembles a professionally produced or edited video. You do NOT have to have ANY talent as an on-air personality… you have to have a fan base. You do NOT have to have a track record of well-done videos… you have to have a fan base. You do NOT have to look good COUGHunlessyou’reafemaleCOUGH… you have to have a fan base.

This is one of the reasons the term “famous for nothing” is tossed around so much. If you ask “do you know XYZ?” or “have you heard of XYZ”, the answer will be “yes”. If you ask what that person does, you’ll see perplexed facial expressions and the scratching of heads. :D Basically, these people are popular NOW, and unless you were around back in the day when they initially developed their fan base, you can’t figure out WHY anybody would care what they said about ANYTHING outside of whatever their ultra-narrow niche of expertise is…. whatever that might be. This leads me to my point about Jeremy’s article…

There is a difference between the ability to attract attention and the ability to influence those whose attention you’ve attracted.

Lindsey Chen and I dropped a post two days ago, and two hours after I pressed “publish”, the visitor map for that one article looked like this:

Map for Top 10 Mistakes Guys Make When Trying To Get A Girl

What this means is that we wrote something that people were interested in reading.
What this does NOT mean is that we have any influence over anyone who read it.

Is it POSSIBLE that people might listen to what we have to say on topics other than dating? Yes. However, the fact that we have X amount of “eyeballs” doesn’t necessarily translate to the ability to mobilize ANY of those people in the direction of a cause. This is what makes it seem like social media is full of hot air. :D

What we’re developing is “cred”. The important question is “what area/field are we developing ‘cred’ IN?” If you’re famous for asking people questions, why should anyone care what YOU have to say? If you’re famous for being attractive… why should anyone care what YOU have to say? If you’re famous because your parents are famous? If you’re famous because you did a cool video one time? If you’re famous because you have a lot of subscribers or video views on YouTube?

Who cares?

That’s what happens when people aren’t following you for YOU, and they’re following you because of what they’re getting out of following you. If you get advance information about gadgets, people are going to follow you… Not because they LIKE you, but because THEY want to find out what YOU found out. If you made a bunch of money and sold a startup, that’s great for you! :D and congrats!… but people are going to follow you to see if THEY can learn what YOU learned and do the same thing YOU did. It doesn’t mean they like you or care what you have to say. I’m sure that most people that hit my site for dating advice don’t even read the poster’s name, or if they read it, even remember it. :)

Having said that… Along the lines of Jeremy’s question and request: “show that social media can change the world”, I do remember a situation where Chris Brogan rallied people to support Amanda Gravel in an event she put on to support someone. I’ve also seen musicians publicized and supported via social media. Very recently, Whitney Hess wrote a heartfelt post about someone she knew who died. Jay & Ryanne have traveled to REMOTE PARTS OF THE WORLD to teach people who never would have found out about it about blogging, internet connectivity and videoblogging.

So.. I’m not saying it’s impossible. It’s definitely worth a try to utilize social media for something other than publicizing ourselves, :) However, the “cred” necessary for becoming known as an authority that people can look up to to point out worthwhile causes is NOT being built up through demonstrating one’s proficiency at Public Relations. You can talk about business and social media ALL DAY, and if you turn around and don’t pay people WHAT YOU OWE THEM and ON TIME, your “cred” is ZERO. You can get interviews with “important people” ALL DAY, and if the word in the street is that you treat your fans and followers like garbage, your “cred” is ZERO. You can sell as many businesses as you want, and if nothing you have to say RIGHT NOW is original, current and relevant… your “cred” is ZERO.

So, if you’re looking for people to announce when they finally make an iPhone with the camera on the correct side so we can do video iChat with it, you’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking for people that can tell you what tools and sites to use to enhance the productivity of your company… you’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking for what Jeremy calls “a higher value to social media, where we can make people’s lives better and really rally people to help others”, I’m sure there are people that are using social media for exactly that purpose, like maybe Roxanne Darling, but for the most part… “Ain’t that type of party”.

Reader “Mark” had some interesting comments about my post “What if YOU get removed from Google?”. I thought I’d take a minute to talk about his points for today’s UnGoogled blog.

So you don’t have to go back and read my post… A WordPress vulnerability was exploited on this blog and someone added text to my footer which caused Google to take my offending pages down and send me an email saying they might remain gone from google search results for 30 days or more. Here’s what I got in the comments:

Mark: “Given that this WordPress vulnerability has been known for months, it’s your fault for not watching out for it and taking precautions. Every serious business owner backs up his site daily and watches the WP dashboard for news. You can’t hang this one on Google; this one falls squarely on your head. Google doesn’t want to index infected sites. Sounds like a reasonable rule to me.”

What “Mark” is saying makes perfect sense, and is probably 100% correct. Here are my thoughts:

Mark: “Given that this WordPress vulnerability has been known for months, it’s your fault for not watching out for it and taking precautions.”

Now… I had some VERY interesting conversations based around this comment. Not with “Mark” but with people I actually know. The comments were centered around “fault”. The commenters also seemed to feel like I was upset with my 1,048 pages being removed from Google’s search results. :D This is one of the things that happens when you communicate via text. Inflection is lost and the context given by vocal tones and facial expressions is completely lost on the reader.

First of all, like I said in the first post, I don’t need to be listed in Google for business, and I don’t need to be listed in Google for socialization. I am a REAL PERSON with REAL FRIENDS and I do work for REAL BUSINESSES. I get work via word of mouth. I don’t approach people for work. People approach ME to see if I’m available / interested in working on their projects. The only thing I’m missing by not being listed in Google search results is the random hits I get from people surfing the web looking for generic topics such as “Dating Women in NYC” and “How To Break Up With A Girl” and “Male Birth Control Pills” etc etc etc. Who cares? As a matter of fact, I’ve already compensated for the hits I’ve lost, but that’s a topic for another day’s UnGoogled blog entry since I felt like talking about “Mark”s comments today.

Mark: “Every serious business owner backs up his site daily and watches the WP dashboard for news.”

Obviously, this is a ridiculous statement. :) All you have to do is put the word “Not” in front of that sentence, since obviously only one instance negates that entire statement. So… “NOT Every serious business owner backs up his/her site daily and watches the WP dashboard for news”. Ahhhh… That’s better. Another good statement would be “Every serious business owner SHOULD back up his/her site daily and watch the WP dashboard for news”. Even THAT makes more sense. :D

The other comments I received that weren’t posted on the blog were along the same lines… You should have known. You should have been keeping up with the update notifications. You get what you pay for (Since WordPress is free). You wouldn’t drive a car without knowing how to fix it (which is bullshit).

I found two things interesting about these comments. The first one was that I was consulting *GEEKS* for this discussion. I was talking with people who live and breathe web design. Oh, I just remembered another one! :D “WordPress has to constantly be updated… If you want to avoid that, use Moveable Type”. See what I mean? The people I was talking to had extremely extensive knowledge about blogs compared to mine. That’s like someone asking me about editing and my acting like they know as much about it as I do and then saying it was their fault for not knowing what I know, even though they don’t do what I do. :)

So, is the situation “my fault”? Sure. I’m the one that didn’t upgrade to the newest WordPress. But you know what? That makes me just like ANYBODY.ELSE. that hasn’t upgraded to the latest WordPress yet. And THAT means that ANYBODY.ELSE. in that same situation that reads what happened to my blog can get something out of it and potentially prevent the same thing from happening to them. Good. :)

The other interesting thing about the expectations of people “staying on top of” the current state of their blogs (whatever platform they’re on) is that the internet’s all about opportunity. It may even be about the lowest common denominator. People are SUPPOSED to be able to make web sites without being WEB DESIGN GEEKS. People are NOT supposed to drive cars unless they have a particular level of proficiency. One of the main ideas of the internet is freedom of expression and the opportunity to do things you normally wouldn’t get to do. Most people that have shows on the internet wouldn’t have made it through auditions for television shows. Should they be disallowed from acting or being videographers or musicians or editors because someone decided that they weren’t talented enough or good looking enough to be a part of the production? Nope. Similarly, there’s no REQUIREMENT for people to know all of the ins and outs of web design before they’re “allowed” to make sites for recreation, fun, entertainment OR business.

Mark: “You can’t hang this one on Google; this one falls squarely on your head.”

I don’t believe anything was “hung” on Google. Hanging it on Google would be saying “I didn’t do anything at all, and my pages disappeared from Google, and I wasn’t informed of whom I could talk to to clear this situation up”. I didn’t say that. This situation DOES bring up the point, however, that perhaps Lowest Common Denominator isn’t good enough. Maybe people who don’t care enough to bother with vigilantly defending the security of their web sites should hire people who love to do that kind of thing to do that work for them. Maybe that’s an industry for someone. :) Community Website Overwatch.

The “You Get What You Pay For” point was a good one. It’s easy to forget that you’re using free software, when software’s SUPPOSED to be free. Blogger’s free. Browsers are free… Safari, Firefox, Flock… You can get FTP programs for free. There are sites like freevlog.org that SPECIFICALLY make a point of teaching people how to set up videoblogs for free. I’m sure there are services where you can pay people to handle all of this site creation, maintenance and security for you if you feel like it. So, I suppose, if you don’t want the blame to “fall squarely on your head”, hire someone else for the blame to fall on or to be vigilant about prevention.

Mark: “Google doesn’t want to index infected sites. Sounds like a reasonable rule to me.”

Yup. Sounds reasonable to me as well. :) We’ll see if they’re as quick to reinstate it as they were to take it down. According to their correspondence, it could be weeks. In the meantime, I’ve been compensating for my 56.04% of missing traffic, thanks to being UnGoogled. I’ve also been contemplating my new Google Anonymity. :D I only met one new person last weekend, and by the time I was introduced, they had already been told about the Google situation by our mutual acquaintance. Still, it was an odd feeling, for the first time since 2006, not wondering if some random person I might run into had stumbled onto one of my posts via Google. It’s relatively liberating, actually, hehe I’m starting to get used to it.

Such an interesting day… suddenly… :D

… At some point this morning, I went to check on my Google status.

The way I do that is to Google the word “Bill” or the word “bill”.

On November 12, 2007, I was on page 4: (#37 of 41,600,000 English pages for “Bill”)

On February 15, 2008, I was on page 1: (#10 of 42,000,000 English pages for “Bill”)

On April 20, 2008, I was STILL on page 1: (#3 of 29,700,000 English pages for “Bill”)

Now, I could have taken a screenshot every single day, if I gave a damn, because I haven’t been outside of the top ten results for “Bill” or “bill” for the last five (5) months. In fact, everybody KNOWS that, because I don’t carry business cards. I just tell people to “Google Bill”.

So anyway, hahahaha :D I google my first name, and interestingly enough, I’m not on page 1. I look at the number of entries and notice that it’s ballooned to 395,000,000 English pages.

So I’m like, ok. So what? This is interesting. For once, I get to see myself on page 2. When they get rid of those extra couple of hundred MILLION results, I’ll be back in position.

Nope! :D

Page 3?… 4?… 11?….. Nothing. :D

So now, I’m getting suspicious, so I start googling stuff that I *KNOW* I’m on page 1 for, such as “Bill Cammack” and the first thing that comes up is my Flickr set. :/

Photo by Jonathan Dingman

So now I’m like “oh. I see. My entire DOMAIN NAME has disappeared from Google”. :/ So then I did this search:

and received this: :D

And… Yes… I tried it in “all languages” too, as if I EVER post in anything except English.

Now…

I don’t know anything about how sites disappear/reappear in Google’s results. This Page gives Google’s explanation of what could happen to YOUR site:

Also, as I mentioned, there are usually tens of millions of English pages for “Bill” and today, there are hundreds of millions, almost ten times the usual number. However, that makes no difference, because my site is currently not indexed by google AT ALL, as if it never existed. :D

Now… Rewind a couple of days… On July 16, 2008, I was experimenting with Google Ads and wrote a post about it, so the two things that came to mind were that a) someone tampered with my site, or b) I messed something up when I added and then deleted my Google Ads within like two days, because they totally weren’t floating my boat. As I was discussing this with Tyme, she mentioned that my site might have been removed for some sort of Adsense violation. Googling removal situations, I landed on a page that said they usually send out some sort of explanation if they remove you themselves……

So I go to my junk mail folder, and lo and behold, there’s an email from “Google Search Quality”, which read:

Dear site owner or webmaster of billcammack.com,

While we were indexing your webpages, we detected that some of your pages were using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines, which can be found here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. This appears to be because your site has been modified by a third party. Typically, the offending party gains access to an insecure directory that has open permissions. Many times, they will upload files or modify existing ones, which then show up as spam in our index.

The following is some example hidden text we found at billcammack.com:

and went on to describe the offending text.

Interestingly enough, I received this email on July 17, 2008, less than a day after my Google Ads post. When I mentioned this to Tyme, she pointed me to a post she recently made on her 9rules blog, called Securing Your WordPress Site. Thanks to Tyme’s post, which cited this article by Brajeshwar, which describes how he found foreign code in his site’s header file, I figured out what had happened.

Sure Enough… a simple “View Page Source” revealed that my site had been ‘infected’ with “hidden” text when I searched for one of the words that Google informed me was on my site. I switched themes, upgraded WordPress and did a couple of other things to prepare to “request reconsideration” of my site for indexing in Google’s search results.

I did that today, June 18, 2008, and we’ll see how long it takes, since this is what’s written on the reconsideration request page:

Please allow several weeks for the re-evaluation process. Unfortunately, we can’t reply individually to reconsideration requests.

So this got me thinking….

Can YOU afford for your site to be removed from Google’s search results? Would that impact your business? Would it impact your social life? Would it impact your ‘cred’?

Personally, I don’t need google for business. I don’t need google for socialization. I am a REAL PERSON who does work for REAL COMPANIES and has REAL FRIENDS that I hang out with, regardless of whether my site is indexed in Google. The hits that I get from Google are all *RANDOMS*. The people that are wondering what Bill Cammack did last night or last week are either SUBSCRIBED to my site via RSS or have billcammack.com in their favorites or bookmarks somewhere. Being on Page 1 on Google for “Bill” is strictly a NOVELTY for me, because….. I never even BRANDED “Bill”. :D People ask me all the time, “What did you do to get to page 1 for ‘Bill’?”, and I can’t tell them, because all I did was POST. INTERESTING. ISH, like this post you’re reading right now. Granted, I can’t/won’t take credit for the popularity of my site, because other than Google (which, according to Google Analytics accounts for accountED for 56.04% of my page hits) I get a lot of referral traffic from people like Richard Blakeley & Lux Alptraum of Boinkology.com.

So, like I said in my posts about Fame and “Star Power”, I couldn’t possibly give a damn about people that I don’t know at all googling some topic that I happened to have posted about and enriching their own lives by reading what *I* wrote. :D Therefore, it doesn’t matter to me AT ALL, that according to Google right now, my site doesn’t even exist.

But what about you?

What would happen to YOUR business if Google suddenly didn’t see your site?
What would happen to YOUR standing in your field amongst people that don’t know your CV yet?
What happens if nobody can google YOUR company and see years worth of posts and videos and pictures and awards and accolades and recommendations?

I have over 1,000 posts on BillCammack.com that are currently absolutely ****ing INVISIBLE on Google. It’s funny, :) because this is such an odd feeling that I can’t really explain it. :D It’s relatively unique. It’s like the world suddenly caught amnesia when it comes to anything you’ve said or done over the past umpteen years.

The closest I can come to explaining it is… We’ve all seen what happens when Twitter fails.

What happens if Google fails YOU?

… continued from E-Stalking [Part 1] and E-Stalking [Part 2]

Now, I FIIIIIIIIINALLY get to the part about why *I* E-Stalk. :)

First of all, it’s FUNNNNN!!! :D

I really enjoy reading about what people think about themselves and comparing that to my impressions of them. It’s so interesting when someone attractive thinks they’re not, or when someone smart thinks they’re stupid. It’s fun to see what people devote their time and energy to. Actually, I did this to myself just yesterday. I was watching my iTunes feed on my iPod, and other than a couple of Rock Band videos, the entire feed as of late has been videos from blog.blip.tv. Well… My Indy Mogul video took quite a bit of my creative energy recently, but the point is that I didn’t realize how my stream had changed until I scanned through the videos in a row. Doing the blip videos pretty much covers my intersest in being creative and outputting content, so without knowing it, I shifted my focus. So I learned about myself by accidentally E-Stalking myself by watching my own iTunes feed. Read the rest of this entry »

… continued from E-Stalking [Part 1]…

So… I’m minding my business, like I love to do… (my sister’s patented story-opening line)… and I start getting hits from Melissa’s site…

In the first line of her post, Being a Relater, I saw my full name and a link to my site. To this point, I’ve only referred to Melissa by first name in text & tags because I wasn’t sure whether my post was going to become some format of a ‘conversation’ between us or just one post BY me ABOUT her. :) I felt it would have been a Social Media faux pas to encroach on her Google Search results (like my posts love to do). So, since she’s ack’ed me at this point, I’ll mention that her name is Melissa Sconyers, and as far as I can tell, she’s a prodigy/phenom.

I had intended to go in a different direction with part 2 of E-Stalking, but I hadn’t anticipated her posting about my post, so now I’m compelled to respond to a couple of her points. Read the rest of this entry »

So I stopped by Melissa’s blog, and I’m skimming/reading her ideas, and I see this post called Stalking 101. The reason I decided to blog about reading her post is that she was blogging about exactly what I was doing at the time. :)

I decided to check out her reasons for googling people (searching for references to their names or sites they author or are a part of like, Bill, for instance :D) to see if they were similar to my own.

To paraphrase, here are her reasons:

1 ) Being an introvert (including potentially appearing “maladroit at small talk”)
2 ) Needing context for conversations
3 ) Wanting to ‘get to know someone’ before engaging them in “inspiring conversation”
4 ) Attempting to form a fairly complete picture of you based on your online thoughtstream
5 ) Giving the stalkee the respect of wanting to know more about them
6 ) Respecting the time you’ve spent in putting information about yourself on the net
7 ) Wanting to have a meaningful interaction with the stalkee IRL
8 ) Relieving them of redundantly explaining their life story

My reasons for e-stalking overlap with hers at several points, but I have a couple of different ones, which I’ll get to… Read the rest of this entry »