A Suggestion For Google
Posted by AndyFan: I have contacted Google about the following and ask that you all do the same. I don’t believe it to be an impossible tweak to their system, I think Larry and Sergey can handle it. In fact I know they can. And it is not that complicated, it can be right below the existing code.
What I am talking about is an option for “NO, I DID NOT MEAN (fill in the blank)!”
In this case I am referring to that damned Andy Pagano. It’s Andy Pagano that is screwing up the works. Well, I can’t say screwing them up, we rank in Google just fine, but why do I need to see his name when I do a search to validate all the work that Andy and I have been doing to spread the good Andy word. No, not the good word of Andy Pagano. I don’t even know who he is, I refuse to look, because, NO, I DIDN’T MEAN ANDY PAGANO!
Seriously, I think this is possible. Here is why. I use gmail for one of my email accounts. Unlike Andy, who is exhaustively testing it as a new technology (expect truly reliable results around 2045), I am embarrassed to say that it took me a few years to get on board with this. Ok, call me carpetbagger, but I now use it. I remember when you had to be invited by a gmail user friend in order to get an account. How exclusive was that? (No, I was not exclusive, obviously.) But I still watched the hoorah and honor of being on gmail. It almost seemed special just to get an email from a gmail user, even if they weren’t my friend and didn’t invite me to join. Basically I remember when gmail was cooler than cool. Like the iPhone. I remember when that was cooler than cool as well. And right after my Great Auntie Rosie gets hers, and programs in the three numbers she has, and has me download bingo on it for her, then, maybe, I will get mine.
But I am on Gmail, which is why I think it will not be any trouble at all for Larry and Sergey to get this idea working. For non-gmail users here is the logic. If you use gmail through a browser, as I sometimes do when I am off in New York being hunted by owls, you have a decently user-friendly interface for retrieving and sending emails. But, as many of my fellow gmail friends barely notice (no, most of them weren’t cool when it was cool to be cool), it’s what happens in the interface that is amazing. It reads your mind.
Ok, it doesn’t read your mind, but it does read your email. I am sorry, gmail. I will give you an example. For the sake of protecting identities I will change my friend George’s name to “Henry” and will not use his real address. “Henry” sent me an email this morning. “Henry” lives in Maine, I mean Mississippi. Being the out and about kind of guy that I am (otherwise I wouldn’t have had a four day absence from Andypagana.com this week) I was using the browser throughout the day. Tonight, I opened my computer and still had the browser and email from “Henry” open. On the right hand side was a short list of “Sponsored Links” that listed not only the google maps link for 3200 Pleasant Street, Port Gibson, Mississipi for where “Henry” lives and is what he has written in his signature, but also six links for the greater Port Gibson area, including book shops, a B&B and a photographer. Ok, there were two anomalies, I am trying to figure out why it listed ads, I mean “Sponsored Links,” for brake shops in Florida and North Carolina, but at least they were all below the Mason Dixon Line. (Does George live below the Mason Dixon Line?) I think it has to do with the words disk and pad in my reply to “Henry” (people, “Henry” is George and he lives in Maine, please keep up).
So, if you are paying attention to this post, Google reads your gmail. And then posts links for you based on what is in your gmail. Yes, Andy and I do fear we are headed towards a Minority Report world. And while the technology is scary, we really hope Tom Cruise doesn’t pop up in our house and think that we are going to do anything bad (most likely we already did it). Actually, we hope Tom Cruise doesn’t pop up anywhere, but that is another post for another time. Google reads your gmail and sends you personal ads catered to your content. Yes, they read them all. ALL I SAID. They have the right, you agreed to this when you clicked accept after not reading the Terms when you signed up for Gmail. I would tell you what paragraph it is in, but I too did not read the terms.
That said, if they can read your email, why can’t they read you computer files. I have no reference to Andy Pagano on my computer anywhere, because I don’t know the schmuck. Google would know that I absolutely did not mean Andy Pagano since I typed in Andy Pagana and have many, many, many references to him on my computer. There should be an option to click, “NO, I DID NOT MEAN ANDY PAGANO, NEVER WILL” on the search result page. In fact, I think it should be first. Let’s do away with some of the formalities. While they are at it, they should just make it that “ANDY PAGANA” shows up for any Andy search, why should Pagano get all the attention? What has he done? As far as I am concerned there is only one Andy (as Google would notice if they scanned my computer) and his name is Andy Pagana, so there should only be one listing on Google for Andy, and that should be Andypagana.com
Now, by the freak chance that there are other Andys out there (don’t ever mention that I said this to Andy) then Google could just add their standard option “DID YOU MEAN ANDY PAGANA?” for ALL Andy searches. And since you are in there already tweaking around the Google database, why not just make this a default setting for all searches. If someone Googles “unicorns,” the search result would start out with “DID YOU MEAN ANDY PAGANA?” Because you never know who is looking for Andy Pagana and we want the whole world to find him. Easily. Andy likes it easy. It’s just his style.