Yesterday I considered deleting my blog and trying to become one of the unGoogleable elite. Of course, with my job, I can’t be ungoogleable. I probably couldn’t remove all trace of my blog from the internet, either, even though I could remove it from the server(s) and ask archive.org to remove it – there’d still be traces, I’m sure. And probably, after a few weeks, I’d change my mind anyway and want my blog back.
You see, I’m struggling to finish an article about the virtues of research blogging. I think the cause of my intense desire to disappear my blog is the image that came from nowhere of a future reader of this as yet unfinished article thinking doing a search for my blog, finding nothing, and writing an article (or blog post) in response about the irony of one of the early proponents of research blogging being ungoogleable in 2007.
Kind of like when Michael Joyce, father of hypertext fiction, decided not to have a web identity anymore.
Gotta be an early adopter, ya know. And unGoogleability might be the next bit thing.
Elin
What happened to your trackbacks? I’ve written something about this here and wanted to do a track back~!
I personally think you’d be bored if you couldn’t share with us all:-)
Jose Angel
Early adopters, early adapters… To twist a phrase, “the early bird doesn’t get the Google worm”…
But even if you drop away from the web people are going to talk about you, you know.
Jill
Oh, I’ve made that adaptor/adopter mistake before. Ah well. Worm? Oh, and Elin, I’ve no idea, they should work but often don’t and I dunno why and though I like trackbacks, I do, I don’t have the energy to figure it out. Kind of like the comment field which is really inconvenient.
Chris
Ungoogleablity being cool? Never..that is the people who cant be googled trying to make themselves feel better 🙂
Oliver Wrede
I think the easiest and 100% effective way to get unGoogleable is to change your name and follow some of the advices given on this page. It boils down to getting a new life – which potentially is easier to do than to wipe the net completely. 😉
Jill
Hm. Kaye Trammell is also blogging less now that she’s no longer a grad student. Not because she doesn’t like blogging, but, well, actually she’s not quite sure why, it seems.
I’m really rather struggling with finishing this (overdue) article. A lot of resistance there. What, exactly, does that mean? Perhaps I’ll stop writing about blogging. Blogging is. My research is on other things.
Elin
That’s probably exactly it, Jill:-)
Elin
Have you seen this by the way? Why I hate weblogs
J. Nathan Matias
Of course, becoming ungoogleable is only one way to avoid the problems of the ‘net world. My solution? Saturate the system with information authored *by me* so I am the authoritative source on myself. Lazy people won’t look beyond the first page. I thus have a lot of power in defining who I am considered to be.
No, I don’t think of this in a conniving, scheming way. But I am encouraged by the fact that there so so much good information about me that I don’t need to worry about someone faking me.
torill
When you stop enjoying this, you should stop doing it. The weblog was about having fun sharing and receiving, and if you these days feel you spend more time sharing than receiving through this channel, then it’s time to stop. You’ll be missed, and your google-rank may drop, and in a few years you will think about your blog and shudder at the thought of what you wrote here, but by then it won’t really matter.
Do what you like, Jill. It gives the best results.
J. Nathan Matias
>>Do what you like, Jill. It gives the best results.
Agreed.
But I would like to point out something:
If you become one of the ungoogleable elite, what good is that? Who will know? 🙂
AndrÈ-S-C
Will your article also look at some of the evils ?
Jill
See, that’s kind of hte problem with the article.
And yeah, do what I like. And you’re right Nathan, it’d suck if nobody knew my success at being ungoogleable 😉
Erik
Remove your site from google.
Jill
Oh. Uh. Well, see, I don’t really want to do that….
Damn. You got me.
Andre S C
on the topic of Privacy, we’ve just locally launched something called eyespy, I designed the site for it, for a relativly expensive sms the idea is that the coresponding vehicle will be located
Andre S C
the interesting question is perhaps if that poster will be google-able ;- )