Taxgedo vs. Tagxedo
I’m not dyslexic, but last week I was temporarily affected. I wrote about Taxgedo Tagxedo and mixed up the name… I realised something had to be wrong when checking my StatCounter stats – clicking on the Google query that brought the visitor to my site, it showed only 7 search-results. Weird. Even stranger was the fact that, with the duplicates included, there were only 23 results, of which 17(!) are linking to my site – even my contact-page is listed… (Right now, Google displays 146.000 results for the correct/real name – will be interesting to note when and where my updated post shows up in there… Also, the first result for the wrong name is still Tagxedo – apparently Google applies some artificial intelligence there, recognising the mix up!)
I’m writing about it, as it shows a few things. First of all, Google indexes you (me) fast. I haven’t spent any time on SEO on this blog/site yet: all I use is Dr. Greg’s High Performance SEO Plugin (hat-tip!) – and quite frankly, I even haven’t checked its performance… I don’t use any social media (Facebook, Twitter) – I added Google FeedBurner only today… Admittedly, the domain is 9 years old – but it has been stagnant for years with little content and I only installed WordPress a few weeks ago. Domain-age matters – how arbitrary it may be: an older domain with less (relevant) content might be indexed more often and/or faster plus rank higher than a newer domain that offers better info – in case you have some idea/topic, rather register that domain now and put some content there – even if you can only start in earnest months from now.
Also, Google displayed most/all pages of my blog that do not contain the term that was searched for (like Contact, About and test posts). I can not explain why that is, will have to research it.
For comparison, I also checked Bing – only 2 results and both are mine! And for good measure: Yahoo! returns 14 results of which all but one are mine (even linking to my category pages) – speaking of keyword-domination! And I used this for ‘face-to-face’ comparison: Bingandgoogle (also see this post (+ comments) for more: SearchEngineJournal).
Another important fact to note: as a website-owner, do some research and check your visitor statictics on a regular basis. I was not the only one mixing up that name: Taxgedo (and you don’t know how many people actually search for it – or type the url incorrectly!) – links to your site then might get a 404 error. In this case, it appears that the .com is still available – I suggested Hardy to register it, so he can redirect people to his site for $10,00 a year – that is also ‘defensive’, as someone might start blogging on taxes…
And, as a lesson – even about your mistakes you can blog!
UPDATE: 16 May – Google indexed this post already (within 24 hours) – see last picture of the gallery
(Click on image for gallery)
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There is a silver lining in every black cloud, Jacques! Mistakes are great – when you learn from them. 😀