Google says 0XDECAFBAD likes me ..

I got a new domain back in January. I've been meaning to move this blog, but I've been lazy about moving off Userland's web hosting. Userland's recent email telling me I had until May 1 to send them $40 gave me the incentive I needed to get this done.

Google knows nothing about my new site, but it knows lots about my old site. Since the best way to get noticed by Google is to have other people point to you, I'm using Google to find out who's linked to me. Doing an Advanced Search looking for who links to radio.weblogs.com/0106188 gets the job done. But if you take a look at at the list of pages Google claims links to me, you'll notice something interesting: Les Orchard's 0xDECAFBAD seems to be inordinately fond of me. Of the 276 links Google claims to find, 0xDECAFBAD seems to represent at least 80% of them. But if you go look at any of those pages from 0xDECAFBAD that Google says point to me, you won't find me mentioned anywhere. What gives?

The answer lies in looking at the cached page for each one of those. In Les's old site design, he had a blogroll on every page, and I was part of that list. That's flattering, but it makes it kind of difficult. Since 0xDECAFBAD represents so many links to my old site, Google might prefer the old site over the new.

And here's where my procrastination pays off. If I don't renew with Userland, the old Radio-hosted content should vanish at some point. When it does, Google will ignore all those old links to me. I hope.