Every once in a while, I get quoted by the media. Not as much as my coworkers but often enough for me to set a Google Alert for my name. I guess it is half making sure I am not misquoted and half vanity but nonetheless, it is there. It almost never goes off. In all honestly, Newsle finds my name more than Google does, but today Google paid off.
This afternoon I received this email from Google Alerts:
At first glance, I looked at it and thought, “Hey great, the spider is visiting my blog!” Then I noticed, that the snippet contained the glorious words, Author Archives. I was hoping that meant that my authorship saga was over. Of course, I was running from one meeting to the next and not near my desk and my broken brain didn’t think to just check it on my iPhone (plus I was enjoying the suspense a little). When I finally got back, I checked the RST (Rich Snippet Tool for those that didn’t read yesterday’s post) and… NOTHING!!! CRAP!!! (the extra exclamation points are for my buddy Dave)
Feeling disappointed, I figured I would try a regular Google search to see if I moved up any. I know it hasn’t even been a week, but I’m only looking to rank for my name at this point. When I hit enter and got the search results I was happier than a programmer whose code compiles when I saw:
The best part about it was I was number 6 on the first page above the image results. Holy crap Marie, I didn’t believe it! So i signed out of my gmail account and tried again… still holding fast at #6. Considering I was on page 4 on Saturday, I am thrilled.
I still haven’t figured out the “Missing Required Field: Update” error but I think I am going to bask in the glory of authorship and #6 for tonight (I have to fix my uncle’s computer anyway). Don’t forget to help your friends with insomnia by clicking the little icons below to share my posts on your favorite social media platforms. And if you’re using Twitter don’t forget the #propellerhead hashtag.
