Perhaps Google Needs to Work on Its Ranking Algorithms

Don't get me wrong--I'm flattered that this "multicellular microorganism" in the vasty blogular ecosystem of TTLB shows up second on google searches for "gothic and Enlightenment" just because of yesterday's unfinished post. I'm rather fond of it, to tell you the truth, but does it really deserve to come before Douglass Thomson's review of A Companion to the Gothic (2000) or Ruth Bienstock Anolik's review of William Brown's The Gothic Text (2004) or the Robert Miles-edited "Gothic Technologies: Visuality in the Romantic Era" issue of the Romantic Circles Praxis Series (2005)? Even on google blog search, is it right that my almost-post is listed ahead of John Holbo's call for papers and Miriam Burstein's musings on historical ghosts? I think not.

Now, I'm not saying that google's web and blog searches should imitate google scholar completely. Just that some measure of the quality, depth, and interest of a site/post should be incorporated into google search and ranking algorithms. Since that seems pretty difficult for them to do, let me propose instead that all five people reading this go now and link to the above pages and posts to drive that particular CitizenSE post down to the bottom of the first page where it belongs!

That said, I am perversely pleased that my plug for my friend Mike Davis's Reading the Text That Isn't There: Paranoia in the Nineteenth-Century American Novel in a comment over at Hug the Shoggoth (where the race and decay blogging is doing quite well, thank you) is ranked third on this google search. (Little-known and less-cared-about fact: the Davis duo will be visiting Japan in June!)

This public service announcement brought to you by The Hey, It's in the Mid-70s on a Friday in May, for Crying Out Loud, Subcommittee of the Celebrate the Weekend Early Committee.