Popping Off

Google Page Rank Meltdown aka Help Me Obi Mari Smith

I don’t know whether to attribute it to sun spots to or a fatal flaw in Google’s page ranking algorithms, but I recently found myself prematurely slapped with a Google Page Rank of 3. Perhaps Google swiped my site on the precise day when Stitchblade (a legitimately popular blogger) and her friends stopped by to support her in my post about her blog. Maybe My Bitter Half paid The Big G off to keep me in the home office and out of his hair.

Regardless of the reason, my sudden status has turned me into a spastic, twitchy basket case. You see, PR 3 seems to be the magic number for those of us with monetized blogs. Yes, I admit it. My blog is monetized. [Edited to add, my blog is no longer monetized. Ref: I will be a ho no mo!] I do this because Joe Joe needs a new pair of shoes. Bills to pay. Times are hard. Don’t you dare judge me. Anyway, advertisers who’d previously splashed mud in my face while swerving widely to avoid me were now knocking at my door and offering me tiny amounts of money to write sponsored reviews. I was floored. I expected this might happen, but after many more months at the very least.

Now I’m paralyzed. Unlike Stitchblade, I do not work best under pressure. I implode like a snot-laden Kleenex. I become wide-eyed and jumpy like a spazzy chihuahua. My hair gets frizzy. My kids fear the vein that pumps so purple and visible on my forehead and occasionally whips around like an unruly hose.

Not unlike Kate, my brain has been wiped clean of all thought. The self-induced pressure to keep my rank up has nearly driven me to drink.

It’s become so bad that I’m now considering joining Facebook. (The rabbit hole of doom).

I’ve been riddling my site with various social bookmarking icons. My God, it’s beginning to make me look desperate.

I’m worrying that my only true regular commentator, Putradi, (bless his little heart) will tire of me and gravitate away.

I’ve spent nearly an hour trying to compose a hooky Tweet to @marismith . If I do, perhaps she will be lured in. She will be powerless to resist my wit. She’ll take time out of her busy day to view my blog, and be glad she did. She’ll think to herself, “Now there’s a blogger with promise! I’m going to take her under my Mariwing and show her the golden path to Blogvana!”. Blogvana, of course, being my idea of Blogging Nirvana.

I’ve been blogging about Robert Scoble, a popular tech geek blogger, in hopes that he’ll become so irritated at the unwanted attention that he’ll come here himself to comment and ask me to scuttle off from whence I came. It will, of course, be supremely humiliating. However, definitely not the worst of my many internet humiliations. Perhaps he’ll bring a couple of his thousands of internet buddies along with him. Surely that will help to keep my Page Rank up until the next Google pass. It matters not that his blog niche is not even remotely related to mine, nor that technology is of no particular interest to me. I’ll be placing these efforts in my bulging “seemed like a good idea at the time” file. That’s not to say the Scoble Hole isn’t a fascinating place. Reading his posts and comments is like being a fly on the wall at an MIT Frat party. Not unlike piggybacking the Mars rover to somebody like me.

It would help if I could write. Mind you, I’m under no illusions with regards to my writing abilities. On a good day, my technical skills are passable. I’m more of an emoter than a writer. But there are times when I wish I had stores of talent and knowledge upon which to draw to tickle your literary senses into a titter. To make you want to come back and see me on occasion. To inspire you to think or laugh or (dare I say it?) comment on my posts.

I suppose if it’s meant to be it will be. For now, I’ll make an effort to slough off the pressure and continue to have a good time, as was my original intent. I’ll have faith that if my ranking should go down, you won’t be too high on schadenfreude to drop by and give a sistah some love. And tomorrow I’ll be one step closer to knowing how to be a woman.

© 2008 Retro Heather.