Courting Google: How to Impress the Goddess of the Web
Google, is best understood as a bi-polor goddess who dresses up like a dandy fancy lad fop. I've watched her for sometime, and I have a feeling I'm beginning to understand her pet peaves, her bizarre rituals, and her seemingly unpredictable behavior. If this entry strikes the reader as confusing, understand that google is by-her-nature very confusing. Forgive me for the male-ness of my viewpoint, however, there are many similarities between my experiences dating(the more materialistic women in particular...), and my experiences with courting google.
Why Google is Female
First of all, the sheer complexity of google's thoughts, and decisions leads me to believe that she cannot be male. Think about it: she doesn't care about appearence, rather she is concerned about what's on the inside (design vs. content). Yet, at the same time she wants you to dress snappy and keep your weight down (I'm serious, read on). She absolutely HATES pornography -- and while some females do like pornography, it is far rarer to find a male who HONESTLY dislikes pornography. She listens to your words very carefully, and will judge who harshly for crude language, bad grammar, or a poor vocabulary. All in all, this doesn't really sound like a dude. So, what are google's preferences?
1. No Fatties -- If your pages are fat, and I don't mean fat with a "ph", she'll judge you. Keep your page sizes below 100k. This means its time to drop the javascript layouts, the <font>,<table>, and other depreciated tags, and move to clean CSS standards-based design. Yes, I know you'd like to think that CSS is still a fad, but forgive me -- your page looks horrible, its gained too much weight, and google thinks your a slob. You can either deny it, or deal with it.
2. Dress Consistantly -- Google doesn't care if your page is dressed metrosexually, or conservatively -- so long as you pick one template, or the other. To put it another way: Keep your page layouts consistant. She assumes that if you dress in a suit one day, and then in tie-dye the next day that you probably get your clothes from goodwill, and don't know "who you are" quite yet. On the otherhand, she associates consistant page theming with "togetherness", and professionalism. This is one reason why content management systems like Drupal rank so well. On the otherhand, if you've created a set of inconsistant pages with dreamweaver, than SUPRISE: google thinks your a disgustingly bad dresser.
3. Google Gets Bored Easily -- Make sure you have something new for her everytime she see's you. And be forewarned, the more new content you give her, the more often she comes back. She is a beast who cannot be fed. However, she also rewards you for up-to-date content, so its worth feeding her. Now, its okay to disappoint her every once in a while. However, disappoint her consistantly, and she'll begin to punish your pages. Have a business website? Is it ranking badly? When was the last update? One YEAR AGO?! Well, obviously you need to get to know google a little better. She's very upset with you.
...to be continued.