I once got delisted from Google for writing about how I went to a Women’s March protest.
I didn’t tell a single lie. Bunch of people came to Chicago— all of them said they were bussed in from Indiana and Iowa. They had their kids wearing vagina hats, carrying signs— none of those kids wanted to be there. Their parents are stupid fucking liberals who don’t actually help anybody: they just think that protesting is like going to brunch. It’s performative horse shit that helps no one. They didn’t actually give a shit: they just came for the spectacle of it all. To make themselves feel better.
God, I hate it. Fuck, did they litter.
No, I’m not some empty-brained Trump superfan. I’m a liberal. I’m a feminist.
That’s why I hate these people so much.
Because they don’t help anybody. They just pretend to.
Still, Google hit me with the deprioritization whiffle bat.
That’s the day I learned that, yes, Virginia, something fucky is going on in the tech space.
But enough about that. I wiggled out of that, like I always do, no worse for the wear. Hell— I’m better now!
Anyways.
I want to talk about why Google sucks.
Google thinks it owns the Internet.
And for a while, it did. But it doesn’t any longer. Google’s web search is absolute dog shit right now; it’s operating somewhere in the same realm as Yahoo! Search was, before Google ate its lunch.
I hope somebody eats Google’s lunch.
Two things that fuck me off about Google:
- AMP. This is Google’s stupid attempt to try to turn the Internet itself into a Google product. They host your content, and they require it to be in a stupid fucking format that reduces the complexity, and beauty, of your website, into information they can just use. I dropped this shit. Fuck them.
- The grey materialization of the Internet.
That last one takes a bit of explaining. See, Google’s algorithm, made by them, something of which they are in full control of, they ranked websites based on certain criteria. Which, of course, you have to, in order to have search that works at all.
But they didn’t just stop there. They instead started to make proclamations about how they wanted data on the pages to be ordered. And the end result was, people just made spam pages that used all the right syntax, all the right keywords, in all the right places, in a format that Google loved— and that’s why when you search for a problem you need to fix, you get a barely-related page from some dipshit, where they’re just dancing around the problem, describing it, but there’s no actual useful information on the page.
I’ve disliked Google for these reasons because it essentially means they’ve put their hands in the pie. By that I mean that they’ve started to decide not the order that the search results appear in— that’s their purview. That’s their website. But no— they went a step further, and started making ‘suggestions’ as to what they wanted to see from people who were making webpages.
To which I reply, shut the fuck up. That’s not your place. You don’t have the right to tell people how they should be doing things. You don’t have the right to try to twist the Internet into what you want it to be.
Demanding that people switch their websites to https was probably a good idea. I’ve heard reasons why it’s essential. Trouble is, I already know that the NSA can fucking destroy it; so why should I care?
I should also note that Google had both its thumbs in its collective ass for the past decade or so, while people were getting harassed. Obviously, Google wasn’t doing the harassing. But some people’s search results were just poisoned by people like Encyclopedia Dramatica, and Kiwi Farms— and getting those things delisted, up until now, was like pulling fucking teeth.
For the longest I didn’t give a single shit about my SEO. Then, 3 dumbass kids (literally 14 and 15 year olds, I’d find out) decided to make an Encyclopedia Dramatica page on me.
Did it scare me? Oh, Hell no.
It pissed me off. Because, how fuckin’ dare you shit on my SEO?
It didn’t take much to ‘fix’ my SEO. Years later, I even got both Encyclopedia Dramatica and Kiwi fuckin’ Farms de-listed from Google.
At this point?
I’ve won. And now, I’m done.
I’m tired of looking at my ‘SEO’. I’m tired of using all the right terms to get Google to listen; I’m tired of trying to ‘stay on top’. There’s no longer any fucking threat: if somebody tries to harass me, Google de-lists it. Game over— forever. It’s not even a challenge anymore.
So I quit. And I quit because, why should I pay attention to this anymore?
Why does Google’s shitty fucking SEO deserve my precious attention?
Not worth my time.
Back to the other story. I tried AMP, y’know. I really did. I even tried to get this place listed as a news website— others have done similar things with their blogs. Y’see, I wanted the cool ‘Articles by Author’ thing that I saw Jason Barnard once get. (It seems to be gone now.)
Well, that’s all over. I’m not pursuing that anymore. No AMP.
Know why?
Because Google wants to control the content, and how it shows up. I don’t fuckin’ care if they host it; I don’t intend on having my life’s fuckin’ work co-opted. They did that shit with Wikipedia: not me. Not fucking me.
With Wikipedia, they used their biography articles to produce Google Knowledge Panels. One of which— hehe, fuck it, nine of which— well. Suffice to say, I have one.
And nobody who’s actually famous gives a single shit about it.
Google Search “Brad Pitt”. You’ll see a big ol’ “Claim this knowledge panel” button. That means he hasn’t claimed it.
Nobody who’s actually famous has claimed their Knowledge Panel. Not unless they’re extremely fucking controlling about their own fame— and, oh, wow. Google Tom Cruise. Huh!
The other thing is this shit barely even fucking works. I just Googled Bruce Willis, and his panel didn’t even show up. What? He hasn’t claimed it, either.
Not Sylvester Stallone; not Wesley Snipes; not Keanu Reeves. Not even Arnold.
ELVIRA, MISTRESS OF THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ DARK HAS NOT EVEN CLAIMED HER KNOWLEDGE PANEL.
If Elvira doesn’t have it or want it, I don’t want it, either.
At one point, this was fun. Getting in there— getting my own panel, against the will of many gatekeepers? I was smarter than all of them. I got in.
i won.
But now I’m done. This is me saying, this part of my life is done.
Goodbye, Google Knowledge Panel.
I can’t stand to keep giving a shit about you.
And, Google?
Goodbye, assholes. And good luck.
Fuck you VERY fucking much for screwing up the Internet.