Skip to content

My Reaction to One of My Posts Being Overrated by Google

One would think that I would be quite pleased when I see that one of my blog posts appear among the first ten results returned by Google when a commonly entered search term is entered into Google. However, there is one post that I had recently written that I do not believe is worthy of being on the first page of Google’s search results after a certain frequently entered search term is submitted to Google.

I have recently found that a number of individuals have found their way to my site after entering “writing firefox extensions” into a search engine. It was after finding that more individuals than I expected were viewing a post that contains that search term in its title that I decided to conduct a Google search using that term. I then found that the blog post that I wrote titled “Going Beyond Programming When Writing Firefox Extensions” was on the first page of search results when I Googled that term. You can see where that blog post currently ranks in search results when that term is entered if you click here. Since the time that I first discovered where that post ranked when that search term is used, I have found that that post did not rank as high as it previously did. However, I am unsure if it should be ranked among the first ten results, ahead of hundreds of thousands of results returned when a search for that term is conducted.

The term “writing firefox extensions” may often be entered by those who would like to join the many individuals who write extensions for Firefox. When a search for information on writing Firefox extensions is done, what individuals may want is the best information on how to write these extensions. However, my aforementioned blog post does not contain the best information for those who aspire to write Firefox extensions. Inclusion of the text of this search term in the title of that blog post is what may be one reason it ranks as high as it does among these search results. However, I never meant for that blog post to be considered an authoritative guide for those who want to write Firefox extensions. If I had known that that post was going to be ranked that high among search results, I would have put more effort into making it contain as much useful information as possible.

I would like to apologize to those who tried to find information on writing Firefox extensions only to find that any of their time was wasted by coming across this information that may not have been very useful. I have mentioned before that Google is not perfect. That blog post being ranked as high as it is appears to be evidence of this fact. However, Google’s algorithms were designed and written by those who have much knowledge of search engine technology. To dispute where pages should rank among search results would seem to be arguing with these individuals. And who am I to argue with them? I suppose I will need to accept that some my blog posts rank higher among Google’s search results than they should.