The last couple years I’ve spent a lot of time in the Google Webmaster Help groups. Most of that time I’ve tried to help people with problems with their websites and Google. Together with the webmaster (every site is unique) and the other active members in the groups we’ve tried to work out where things are going wrong, what needs to be changed and often we’ve been able to fix things so that the website is back in the index, the content is getting found and hopefully, the webmaster has learned a thing or two. The best part for me is when a webmaster not only changes a few technicalities but is also able to take in and implement changes in strategy, changes that make the site even better for his visitors and in the end gets his unique content easily found. I love it when that works out!

I really enjoy these kinds of problems – finding a source of trouble in a giant heap of pages, using experience, guesses and estimations based on a “black box” that we know as Google. These puzzles keep your mind sharp and force you to think in a connected way. Sometimes you have to take a few steps back and look at the overall picture to find the real issues – and that’s something which is hard to do when you’re directly involved. Taking a look at the larger picture is something that takes a bit of practice, and thankfully it’s something that is done often in another place I love to be, cre8asite forums.

There’s a reason why I even got involved with all these puzzles in the first place: I know there is a lot of really important information out there that just can’t be found, and if it’s not findable, it will get lost. Perhaps forever. It might not be the solution to life, the universe and everything, but there is so much out there, online, on the web, that just can’t be found because of some technicality that the webmaster never thought about. On the one had, I want to help the webmaster to get found, on the other hand, I’d love to help the search engines to find his content, regardless of what technicalities he has forgotten.
Continue reading ‘Moving to a new office in September’ »

How do you start a new blog?

This blog will certainly not win any prizes for beauty, but it does what I want and that’s all I need. I bet most people will be using their feed readers to read along anyway (at least I do) :-).

In case you don’t know me, I’m a software engineer based in Switzerland, after having lived some time in the USA. I work at and own a small software company (yes, you can do both) that makes software for medical practices in Switzerland. On the side I love to be active in the webmaster forums at Cre8asiteForums and in the Google Webmaster Help Forums (formerly known as “softplus”, now as “JohnMu”). I love tough technical problems relating to crawling, indexing and ranking.

Continue reading ‘Hello world’ »