Search and Found

I was typing in my blog name to find my blog today. And I found that someone else may have viewed this blog by seeing the related web sites served up by typing in the keyword "elias canetti".

It was on some sort of a unheard Search engine or free encyclopedia called "Sirchin". My post Eraritjaritjaka is the number 4th on related blogs.

For a second, I decided to try my luck on the almighty Google. After going through the first 20 pages and see the page number is only growing--I am that vain and wishful thinking, I decided to admit that I am no expert on Elias Canetti and obviously, Google knows it.

But why Sirchin have my post? I know it must has a much smaller database of content and key words inventory than Google, but why me, no, I should not get personal here, it is about Elias. But why my post? It has no doubt boosts my self esteem as a blogger for whatever it worths.

To test its width and depth of knowledge, I tried to type in another keyword where I usually get some content on, it found nothing.

The article in the last page of this weekend's New York Time Book review talks about how writers can ensure their works being smartly found online using some hacking or whatever technology the author think only the computer geeks holds the key.

Actually, you can pay for yourself to be found online. It is not very unlike a yellow page ads, but it all depends on what keywords you want yourself to be related to and and the price will depend on how many others are competing with you for that keyword.

It is all about supply and demand. You really think Google has a business model that is revolutionary?

However, how much you pay for a click on that keyword will determine the position of your website on the list of website being served up. You know that the possiblity of getting clicked on decrease substantially if it locates on the second page and after, in other words, only the compulsively obessesive ones will find you if you are not serve up on the top portion of the first page.

Most of us have a quite unique keywords, our name. We look for loved ones, newly met ones and secretly admired ones and secretly disliked ones, online. And if we are lucky, we are being missed and being looked for. We or those who look for us type in the names. Names as a key word are usually searched by people who have already known us in some capacity.

But sometime, when we talk about things, totally unknown people found us through those topics, clues, comments we made, review we typed, or if somebody stole an image that we posted, or any piece and bits of information. Through the web, we are connnected with stangers with common interest or common inquisitions or common color preferences, willingly or not. Through the web and our key words, we are easier to be found.

But, maybe also easier to disguise. An anonymous name is all we need when we can freely roam in the realm of cyber world if we do not want to be found by people who know us in the real life but can still have a ture voice.

The world is getting smaller every day. Connection and communication and information sharing never seems easier. Yet our true self seems never so trival and small. It almost feels like when you can talk to some species on another planet, when that distance does not matter anymore, then the intimacy of the world around you are so much discounted as well. Why bother say hi to your neighbor when you can talk to the guy in Australia like a long lost friend.

Maybe we feel safer to be found and loved on line rather than found and loved through a encounter in the bar. To have someone show up on my website is better to have some stangers show up on my door.

But if you know me, you know that a big catch is imminent.

All the information in the world and all the keywords together, no matter how you refine it to match up with what we are looking for, will not enable us to find one thing: A heart that determines to hide itself.

Still, we never stop seraching for it, and to believe that we can find and can be found again.