I Am A Web Geek

I'm an addicted webcrawler. There! I finally admitted it and I have to say I feel a lot better for it. The thing is...I'm really good at it. Go ahead...have a seat there next to me and we'll see who can come up with the cheapest flight from Oslo to Auckland. It'll make you weep. Even my own husband, Mr. Geek God, has acknowledged (albeit with a mere grunt) my natural oneness with googledom.

Instinctively, unlike a mere amateur, I know searching the term "manhole" will mire me in porn purgatory for hours of time that I will never be able to get back. Instead I google terms like "Underground Electrical Access Cover" Sure, all of those words will still somehow manage to bring up some rather interesting porn sites, but the number is noticeably less.

It's the words...

I'm a writer, or have delusions at times of being one...and a bookworm. Raised on Sunday crossword puzzles, I cut my first teeth on a bracelet made of Scrabble tiles. Words are my life...sad, huh? I know a lot of words...big words...and just to throw the fear of whatever being you worship into you...I can even spell them.

Well...most of them. I just wish you hadn't brought up the spelling bee incident of 1972. One hundred and ten annoying little nerds...err...students vying for the title of Spelling Bee Champion of New Mexico. I came in fifty-fifth place...undone by the word rehabilitation. My spellchecker has assured me once again that I will never...ever...misspell that word as long as I draw breath. It wasn't a total loss since the boy next to me was really kinda cute and who cared about some dumb old spelling bee with Reuben (it said so on his name tag) standing beside me...

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes...web-crawling with good words.

Why is knowing the right words important? Think of all of those lovely tags floating out there in cyber space. The internet isn't like a fast food menu board. You can't point to the #7 combo like you do at McDonald's and expect that you'll get exactly what you ordered. Come to think of it, you really can't be guaranteed to get what you ordered at McDonald's either...but that's a different hub.

There are two basic types of...no make that three types of people out there in cyberspace:

• No matter what this person is peddling...whether it's porn or god, they will use tags just to pull you in. They'll use words like vagina, blow job, penis, smile and erection. Doesn't that just piss you off when you are doing important research on facial expressions? However...there are ways to avoid this trap. Salesmen really aren't big on synonyms...especially if the synonyms are complex and have more than three syllables. Being multi-lingual helps too. So for example instead of searching on the term "smile" and falling victim to The Salesman, I will just do a search on "Translation of the Spanish word sonrisa." I'm sure it's possible that I might accidentally get slammed with Spanish porn...but it is foreign porn and therefore more interesting anyway.

• This is the person you are actually hoping to find on the web. He knows this and he's reaching out to you...see how hard he is reaching? His tags are as specific as possible and because he is an expert he'll use terminology that you would only know if you were truly interested in the subject. Anyone can search on the word "cheese"...but only a serious cheese fanatic would think to google the word "gorgonzola." People with large vocabularies or useless knowledge of obscure facts will always manage to zero in on The Expert's site before the average user. While Mr. Average is mired down in The Salesman's sites, or even worse, The Crap sites...Ms. Word Geek has booked the last two seats on the cheapest flight from Oslo to Auckland, hired a car and booked the last room in the city. Sucks to be Mr. Average.

• The internet deluded people into thinking because they know a few words and have an opinion or an interesting hobby like gopher stalking, the rest of the world needs to know about it. Yep...people just like me. A lot of these people, unfortunately are rather...stupid. They're lives are duller than a plastic knife from KFC, they can't spell and to make up for their basic illiteracy, they've invented their own language. Not all of the crap is bad crap though. Hubpages, for example (and not wanting to miss a really great opportunity to kiss butt) is mostly good crap bordering on occasionally great crap. However, just like in the previous listed Expert, you'll need to know the good words to find the good crap.

This can prove a bit tricky to the expert of the Crap Artists. It's instinctual for them to use good words as their tags to draw the cream of the crop into their site. Unfortunately, we're living in a skim milk world folks. There ain't a whole hell of a lot of cream out there.

My advice is very simple...dumb it down. Instead of using words like "hirstute"...try "hairy"...or "lots of hair." Remember, the less syllables, the better. Try to account for possible grammatical and spelling errors, as in "lost of here" or "lots of hare." Trust me, I feel your pain. You want more traffic, don't you? Yes...I thought so.

So there you have it folks. If you want to be a serious web-crawler like myself, you have to know a lot of words. Big words, small words, adjectives, synonyms and obscure facts all help you to find what you really want to find out there in cyberspace. It's there...everything...I know, I've found it.

And now, you'll have to excuse me...my boss is swearing at his computer again and calling my name. Sounds like a job for Ms. Word Geek...