Google likes me. It took under a week for Google to figure out that I got my ADSL connection up and running, and that it should share that information with other Linux user's with GreatSpeed PCI ADSL modems. Very nice!

This also has the sweet side effect that I'm actually able to use Google to search within the public part of my diary. :-) But since supposedly Google only visits a given page once a month, I got to wondering how it found my ADSL entry so fast...

So I checked my web logs. Unsurprisingly, google visits a few pages from my diary archives every single day. My diary currently contains 1317 entry pages, so that should average out to about 40 entries per day.

The "trick" is that every single one of those pages has the activity box on it - the box to the right containing links to my most recent entries. I suspect the activity box is my back door into the Google database.

This is a trick web designers might want to keep in mind. :-)

Another thing which helps, is that my web site is (or appears to be) a bunch of static pages. Rumour has it that search engines avoid dymanically created sites, because they're afraid of getting stuck in endless loops of dynamically generated pages. Ever noticed that Google rarely (never?) serves up a link containing a question mark? I don't think that's a coincidence!

Finally, my pages are written using relatively simple HTML. No dymanic HTML, no javascript, no flash. So Google, the web's most famous blind user has no trouble understanding my web site.

This is a trait many weblogs have in common, and I suspect it goes a long way toward explaining why "amature" sites like weblogs sometimes seem to be getting preferential treatment from search engines, when compared to corporate sites. I generally have an easier time understanding people who use simple, clear language... and I suspect the same goes for Google. Except Google's language is HTML, not English!

:-)