News of the Google God @ Creative Commons

This is for The Ride, an unreliable chronicle of my experiences in blogging. The next instalment of Fare Game will be ready tomorrow.

In the beginning, Google thought I was a typo.

I’m at the end of the first month of the block-headed project of blogging my hope-to-be novel Fare Game. There are so many things I’ve learnt, so many unexpected valuable experiences and lessons, so much I am yet to learn or even realise I am yet to learn, that to chronicle them would be tedious.

But here’s one observation I want to share … when I type ‘mickmccoy.com’ into Google’s search field it asks me, ‘Did you mean nickmccoy.com?’ If I entered ‘mick mccoy’ Google wouldn’t even be polite enough to ask the question, it would automatically tell me it was Showing results for Nick McCoy and then in micro font underneath tell me to ‘Click here for Mick McCoy’

The most positive spin I could put on this was that Google thought I was a typo. Why would anyone searching the world_wide_web be interested in someone so obscure that the great, all-knowing, infinitely connected, globally networked Google God in the Ether hadn’t mapped me into its database.

‘Mick McCoy? Who the fuck is Mick McCoy?’ the Google God was asking itself. ‘Has he even got a URL? Is there an actual site there? Has anyone ever shown the slightest interest in going to this web address? This site?’

‘Oh look, there is something there,’ the Google God discovered on deeper investigation, because with a little extra effort and a couple more milliseconds of searching the Google God is all-seeing, after all. ‘Hmmm … he’s an insignificant little prick. I reckon this search is actually looking for Nick McCoy, the Dallas Real Estate salesman, or Nick McCoy the Washington gay activist, or Nick McCoy the Charleston RiverDogs baseball player. Or one of the others from the legion of famous Nick McCoys. It must be one of them.’

Not.

Even if I persisted with my folly and was able to persuade the Google God that my search entry was not a typo, that I really was so perverse and such a time-waster to be actually searching for Mick McCoy, the Google God simply changed tack, discouraging me in different ways. It had no qualms in informing me that I was not, in fact, the writer of a new blog of fiction, but rather a former quarterback and current coach of the San Diego Chargers or, if not, producer of the BeatleShow now playing at the Planet Hollywood Resort Casino in Las Vegas, or founder and CEO of the Bandito Brothers, a full service media company that creates, produces, manages and distributes audio-visual …

Not.

Thankfully, this doesn’t happen anymore. At least not on my computer where the bracken-strewn, vulture-infested, previously untrodden path to mcphoenix: mick mccoy’s writing re-animated @ mickmccoy.com has finally, begrudgingly been cached. So now, any time I subsequently display this bizarre interest in the newly re-energised Australian writer Mick McCoy, the Google God doesn’t have to rummage through the back-blocks of its monolithic database to dig up little ol’ me, it recognises my perverse recidivism immediately and, with nary a knowing nod, far more quickly tolerates my oddness, taking me straight to mcphoenix, consequences be damned.

But the Google God has not yet had to cache the ‘mick mccoy’ search on too many other computers, I suspect. At least not the tens and hundreds of thousands I had hoped. Tens and hundreds? Sure, and I thank every last one of you for treading that bracken-strewn, vulture-infested, previously untrodden path to mcphoenix, and bravely clearing the way for others to follow.

So, to be clear: I’ve never been a pro quarterback or baseball player, or even an amateur in those fields since we don’t play much of those sports down here in Australia. I don’t produce a Beatles-themed cabaret in Vegas. I don’t sell real estate, fight to uphold gay rights or run a media company. And my name’s not Nick.

It’s Mick. And I write. And I’m trying to push my way up the hierarchy of the Google God’s search results.

Lesson number one: insignificance can be achieved quite simply and through myriad paths. (The Google God moves in mysterious ways.) Significance takes a lot more work.