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I kept this in a steno pad by the computer and typed it up in September. I've cleaned up the
spelling and left in the parts where I was wrong. The searches were always the same three words,
parke county covered bridges, so the results are comparable from week to week, and I only
counted it as "found" when my page showed up in the first five pages of results.
| February and March |
| Saturday, February 20 |
The bridge page goes up. Six bridges, the festival,
directions from Fort Wayne, and a paragraph about the pie at a diner in Rockville. Title: "Welcome!" I
e-mail the address to my sister, my mother and four people at work, and wait for the world. |
| Week of March 1 |
The world doesn't come. I search for myself every night on
AltaVista, Excite and Yahoo! Nothing. Thursday I mention this at lunch to Jodi Bugg, who keeps up our
company's Web site, and she asks, very kindly, "What's your title?" I tell her. She puts down her
sandwich. |
| Saturday, March 6 |
New title: "Parke County Covered Bridges: A Saturday Driver's
Guide." Jodi explained the two META tags over the phone and I write a description and a keywords list.
The description takes me an hour. It's twenty-one words. I have written whole catalog spreads faster. |
| Sunday, March 7 |
Submission night. The bridge page goes to AltaVista, Excite,
Lycos, HotBot, Infoseek, Northern Light and WebCrawler, one form at a time, about two hours with a modem
disconnect in the middle. Then Yahoo! try #1: I suggest it in a category about architecture with the
description "The BEST guide to Indiana's beautiful covered bridges!! Maps, festival info and MORE!" I am
very pleased with myself. I go to bed at midnight. |
| Sunday, March 14 |
Submit my front page to the same seven. In those days it was
two lines and a link to the bridges, so I don't know why I bothered, but it seemed like the thorough thing to
do. |
| Monday, March 29 |
FOUND: AltaVista, 22 days after I submitted. Second page of
results, under my new title, with my description underneath it word for word. I make a noise that brings my
neighbor's dog to the fence. |
| April and May |
| Tuesday, April 6 |
FOUND: Infoseek. Page one, near the bottom. I check it on the
computer at work at lunch to be sure I'm not dreaming, and I'm not. |
| Thursday, April 8 |
The first "900 SEARCH ENGINES FOR ONLY $39.95!!!" e-mail. For about
ten minutes I consider it. Then I count the search engines I've ever heard anyone mention and get to nine.
Delete. |
| Wednesday, April 21 |
FOUND: Lycos. And my first letter from a stranger, a woman in
Dayton who found me on Lycos and wants to know whether the festival is worth the traffic. (Yes. Go on a
weekday.) I answer her in about four minutes and then reread my answer six times. |
| Monday, May 10 |
FOUND: Excite. Page three. I'll take it. |
| Sunday, May 16 |
Ten weeks, and no word from Yahoo! I go looking for other bridge pages
in Yahoo! and find them all under Indiana, then the counties, then Parke County. Not one in architecture.
Yahoo! try #2, in the right place this time: "Your complete guide to Parke County's historic covered
bridges, with insider driving tips and festival highlights." Jodi reads it and says it sounds like an ad. I
tell her I write ads. |
| Monday, May 24 |
FOUND: Northern Light. Northern Light sorts its results into
little folders down the left side, and my page turns up in one labeled for covered bridges. It's like being
shelved at the library. |
| June and July |
| Sunday, June 6 |
I sign up for The Invisible Eye, a free statistics service I read about
in Jerry Dietz's counter reviews. It shows me which
page each visitor clicked from to get to me. When they come from a search engine, their search words are
right there in the address. This is the best thing I've found all year. |
| Sunday, June 13 |
One week of search words, and among the bridges and the festival, three
people have found my page by searching for office furniture fort wayne. My page said where I worked,
company name and all. I take it off that night. I would like to keep my hobby and my job in different
drawers. |
| Tuesday, June 15 |
FOUND: HotBot. Page one. Fourteen weeks. |
| Sunday, July 11 |
Eight weeks since try #2. I spend an evening reading every listing in
the Parke County category out loud to myself, the way I'd read a competitor's catalog, and notice they all
sound like the same quiet person. Yahoo! try #3: "Personal guide to the county's covered bridges, with
driving notes and festival tips." Thirteen words. No adjectives I'd be paid for. |
| Tuesday, July 20 |
FOUND: WebCrawler, four and a half months after I submitted. Seven
for seven. |
| August and September |
| Sunday, August 8 |
My page is gone from AltaVista. Not lower. Gone. I nearly submit it
again, then look at my steno pad and decide to give it one week. |
| Sunday, August 15 |
Back on AltaVista, same spot as before, as if nothing happened. And
then, because I check every Sunday out of habit: FOUND: Yahoo! Listed in Parke County, with my
thirteen words, five weeks after try #3. I call my sister. She says "Who's Yahoo?" |
| Week of August 22 |
Sixty-four visitors to the bridge page, about a third of them by way of
Yahoo! People are planning their October trips. Five letters this week, all asking about the festival, one
asking if I'm single. (Yes. That is not what the page is for.) |
| Monday, September 13 |
FOUND: Ask Jeeves. I never submitted to it. Somebody's question
shows up in my statistics: where are the covered bridges in indiana. Nine for nine. |
| Sunday, September 19 |
Last week, seventy-one visitors. I type up this diary and the
ten rules, and the festival is three weeks away. I'll be at Bridgeton on the Tuesday,
early, with a thermos. |
The Words That Found Me
From The Invisible Eye, June 6 through September 18: the search words people typed before they clicked
on my bridge page, and how many times. I've only listed the ones that came up more than once, plus my
favorite mistake.
| Search words |
Times |
| parke county covered bridges | 212 |
| covered bridge festival | 131 |
| covered bridges indiana | 96 |
| parke county | 54 |
| rockville indiana | 41 |
| bridgeton mill | 27 |
| turkey run | 22 |
| park county covered bridges (the keyword misspelling earns its keep) | 19 |
| mansfield indiana | 15 |
| where to eat parke county | 8 |
| burr arch | 6 |
| office furniture fort wayne (fixed June 13) | 3 |
| where are the covered bridges in indiana | 2 |
What I take from it: people type short, plain words, the same ones over and over, and almost nobody
types the clever phrase you were proud of. Nobody, ever, has found me by searching for "Saturday driver."
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