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.

Taking the next step

You can probably guess what’s coming up next .

Come September, I’m going to be working for Google in their Zürich (Switzerland) office. I’m joining the team around the Webmaster Tools as a Webmaster Trends Analyst. Looking at the diagram above, being able to do that just about hits the sweet spot in the center – something I’m good at, something I love doing and then: something they’d even pay me to do. It doesn’t get any better. I can’t wait.

What will that mean for the GSiteCrawler and my other websites?

Fortunately I’ve been able to pass off almost everything to my old company, where they have someone who will be able to take over where I left off. At the moment the main problem is the language barrier (English vs German) – but I’m confident that it will improve. Please be patient as they get up to speed – and of course remember that their main business has nothing to do with websites and search engines.

What will that mean for my forum presence?

It would be nice if I could be as present as ever – perhaps with some insights that can help even more. Realistically, however, I know it will take some time before everything settles down and I actually have enough time to do as much as I would like in the forums. Additionally, it will almost certainly mean less speculation on my part about things going on within the “black box” . My goal is to make sure that the communication between webmasters and the engineers at Google can continue to grow, in quantity and especially in quality. That might be through forum postings, through blog postings, at conferences or small meet-ups, with the help of tools and personalized notifications, perhaps even on Google-Talk.

What about this blog?

This blog will remain my personal blog. I won’t be speaking on behalf of Google here. The opinions expressed here are and will remain solely my own. Don’t ask me to make a comment on anything if you want an official answer . And anyway: don’t trust anyone (even if he will soon work for Google), test it for yourself. Trust me on that. Errmm. Whatever.

Countdown to September

Please bear with me while I’m packing things up, tying up loose ends in the office and generally getting more and more nervous. I have a few blog posts that are prepared (in my head) which I hope to put online and a few more interviews to make. I can’t wait for September. Woohoo!

(The graphic is from Scott Hanselman’s blog, who’s doing the same move at about the same time, only to Microsoft instead. Congratulations, Scott!).

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.

I don’t “do” SEO professionally and won’t solve your problems for you, but I can help you to find out what you can do to help things out. I’ll let you know when you reach the stage where you need real, professional, one-on-one help. Once you reach that stage, it rarely makes sense to keep trying to do it yourself – if your site is professional, if you want it to be successful, you will have to invest something into marketing and everything that comes with it.

I love to help the little guy (and gal) get his site up, indexed and ranking. The bigger sites will almost automatically make it into the index (and can spend some money on professional marketing), the small guy has to do it all himself.

My goals in creating this blog were:

• I finally wanted a blog of my own. Really. When you post egocentrical postings on forums, people complain. This is my site .
• I wanted to give you an insight into the neat things that I’ve stumbled upon. Maybe some of these things can bring your site a step forward as well? I will be mainly looking into technical issues, don’t expect any magical business or marketing information from me, and if you do find some, take them with a grain of salt. And when I start to write about design, … just run for the hills.
• I have tried to set this site up to be as accessable as possible. All important items are displayed in straight XHTML.
• If I find something I like, I’ll link to it. I have integrated the last 10 or so “shared” items from my Google RSS reader into the sidebar, I have also provided room to link directly to threads in the Google groups which I feel might be important (the list is also available through del.icio.us). If you can get me to read your RSS feed (I usually only follow full feeds!) and you post something unique and compelling, your link might be on here for a while.

I hope you enjoy your stay here! If there are any topics you’d like me to cover, please let me know.