Google fails to downrank junk sites; Bing and Mojeek fare better

Understandably, I was bemused but then frustrated with the fake articles out there about the new Google algorithm update being created by me and named for me. (Even Perplexity has picked up this misinformation.) Of all those I found and reached out to, only one author—Shahid Jafar—had the decency to remove his article and apologize. […]

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Putting Autocade’s Mediawiki behind Cloudflare

This is not a bad problem to have, but it could get expensive:     Therefore, today I made the decision to switch Autocade to Cloudflare. I had been warned by people who know far more about this than me that it will affect the statistics, so I’ll have to get over not being able […]

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Autocade reaches 35 million page views, the latest million in 41 days

Autocade hit the 35 million mark two days ago, in well under two months, buoyed by days of over 60,000 page views per day. I saw other jumps in the 20,000-a-day mark, even 50,000 on some other days. The last two days alone saw 43,000 page views, bringing today’s total to 7,402,333 since the server […]

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You never know where your interests will take you

A seven-year-old needs to figure this out: what would the Ford Escort Popular Plus be priced at if were assembled in Aotearoa?   Amanda and I were chatting about prodigies. Some young people are amazing, doing uni classes at intermediate or high-school age, or playing piano like Mozart, and while not all of us have […]

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Robert Vanwey on whom to boycott

It’s hard to find fault with Robert Vanwey’s ‘Who to Boycott’, subtitled ‘There are some in business who treat workers like property’. Note: for those who don’t like Substack, you might not wish to click through. But I gave my word to Rob I would link it because I was impressed by his thinking and […]

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Why web pages are becoming homogenized

Dan York in Vermont referred to Mia Sato’s article in The Verge today, on how Google has driven the bland, same-again websites out there. It does lay the blame at netizens more, and fairly so here, given that the desperation behind SEO has led many to employ certain tricks in order to make a buck […]

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The curious case of Google’s SEO searchers

They may no longer be relevant, but most (all?) of our sites still have meta keyword tags. When we redevelop a site, we tend to take the header tags in full from the previous incarnation, so unlike the old joke about George Washington’s axe (‘This is the original. I’ve only had the handle and blade […]

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Twenty years of blogging

First up, as I’ve publicly posted this and have helped out myself, my friend and colleague Hasan Abu Afash is in Palestine, and I don’t need to tell you what he and his people are facing. If you can help out, here’s a link to his Paypal.   Apparently, August 11, 2023 marked my 20 […]

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Healthy jumps

  Some impressive stats from all of you out there in cyberspace: thank you! Autocade’s counter is currently at 6,784,553. When I last blogged about reader stats on the 22nd, it was 6,444,257. (These numbers begin counting from when the site was reinstalled in February 2022.) As the counter only updates once a day, we […]

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Hellos and goodbyes

Twenty twenty-three, what a year. I’ve met some amazing people this year, a lot of whom are in the public service. You know who you are. I am happy to know you. Those who champion the good in our society. Those who offer alternatives to things that harm society. Those who create good in this […]

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