YJL

1   Cause of JavaScript’d

Earlier this month, I started an experiment on Blogger Blog Archive gadget after I saw this:

All names of 12 months are on the list. I was speechless because this only showed me the significance of useless data. It’s useless due to no readers would care about any of them, not just 12 months. If you look closer, “blog” and “archive” are from the widget title of Blog Archive; “labels” probably is from the footer of each post where the labels are listed in.

Imagine these words are counted at least 860+ times because there are 860+ posts in this blog, they show up on each post. You don’t need to be genius to figure out why they are on top list.

This list shows nothing about the real written content, which by me. I can’t see what really are the top keywords between my posts. I think this is common situation on all blogs, no matter what blogging platform is. Archive, feed links, navigation links, and so on, they are common elements on a blog.

After seeing that list, next thing I did was to Google using these keywords [site:blog.yjl.im january february march]. Here was what I saw:

Taken on 3/8. The actual result count is 451+, not 1,880,000,000. That number will only happen in your dream.

See how the keywords hit? No one can find anything. Yes, one can argue that how come someone will google using 3 months names, but you are just missing the point and you will never know every searcher’s needs.

I always feel search engine is still a machine, not smart, even Google’s. Users have to be smart when enter keywords, to make up a good query. No doubt, it is hard to design a good and human friendly search engine.

I am guessing that’s why people started using this SEO term or even created a title like SEO expert or whatsoever. It is just blatantly sad and seems everyone likes that term, even believe it is a good creation. Thinking that SEO is right way to make things better. No. Make machine smarter, not try to feed the data they like.

I and they have different perspectives. They want to have more hits, to have higher rank; I want to have quality and accurate results for whom visits my blog via search engine. I don’t want anyone to be lured in because of false hit. It is false, because those should never be indexed, there are not part of content. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell search engine to ignore certain parts and I don’t have any friend who makes search engine.

2   JavaScript’d Blog Archive gadget

So, I was thinking what if I turned those plain HTML code into dynamically rendered HTML by JavaScript. After around 20 days later, here is the result:

Although, there are still 9 names on top 16, but it is already better than before. And more, look at the results counts:

The counts fell from 451+ to 89 at this moment. Give it a few more days, it should be close to zero.

3   Popular Posts gadget

More than a year ago, I removed Popular Posts from my blog, it was the same reason like Blog Archive. A couple of days ago, I realized that I could also JavaScript’d Popular Posts gadget and I did it. I did a quick check and there was no false hit generated from JavaScript’d Popular Posts. I am satisfied.

Popular Posts gadget can tell visitors what posts may be worth reading, but I needed to remove it at that time. After I removed it, I created a page called “Selections,” I manually edited a list of posts. Well, I probably only edited a few times, I was too lazy. ;p

Anyway, I finally could bring back Popular Posts gadget without worrying some people may not find what they want to find.

4   The Code

You can find the modified code on GitHub.

5   Final thoughts

I am always careful about choosing and persistent on what on my blog. (Finally, I do have a virtue!) You won’t see a lot of gadgets or widgets, no Like, no +1, no Twitter, no Poke, no whatsoever, no nothing. I feel they are dumped into your blog and not many people really click. If they are a user of a service, then they may already have an addon or something to help them share.

However, I did bent my rules a couple of times, but with great excuses. (It is always an excuse, don’t deny it when you are bending.)

Blog Archive could be one. When I found out the issue with Popular Posts, I think I might also know about Blog Archive’s issue, but I left it alone. I need a easy and quick way to know how many posts I have post in current month. I must have thought about Blogger API to re-create archive list, but that would be over-kill. Don’t know why I didn’t think about JavaScript’d until recently.

It had been more than a year since Popular Posts’ removal. By this new method, I finally can bring it back.

I don’t think my thought and insistence of all these are unreasonable, but the people never really see the problems while searching. If they can’t find anything they want, they conclude that’s what it supposes to be.

Maybe searchers don’t care, content owners don’t care, search engine maker don’t care, or just they all see nothing. I don’t know, I have not seen anything talk about search engines index parts should not be in index.

Again, make machine smarter, not trick them.