Listening: Short-Staffed at the Gene Pool, Ruby


I've been working for my company, a search engine that has had a few different names in the 3+ years I've been here. I've seen...a lot of Web sites in that time. Definately not so much of the weirder stuff we all know is out there, usually it's sites tied to business trying to turn a buck.

Some of my favorite sites don't intend to make anyone any money (or at least little sleep is lost on the fact that it doesn't pay for itself), but some of the sites I've hated looking at the most have been because their owners want to make money.

When I first started we used to gripe about wishing we could turn down clients with reasons like "fire your Web master" or "did a drunk squirrel come up with the navigation?" I've seen shitload of ugly ass sites and while that's finally started to abate (somewhat), I still get to deal with sites put together by people who don't realize a Web site does not confer psychic powers upon a potential customer.

If you sell clothing and you want special attention for the page with women's shoes, don't hide the freaking page behind the contact info page! Also, don't make people hunt through pull downs of brand names to see if you have Gucci and Donna Karen shoes, or just the one. Put all your women's shoes on one page and then let the client decide how best she wants to destroy her savings!

Because of the way we're structured, and frankly because of the nature of the Web some people just don't fucking understand who it is they're trying to reach. The dentist who just opened up his private business in Souix Falls will likely only want to attract a clientel from in and around Souix Falls. And certainly if you live in Los Angeles, you're not fucking interested in a dentist in Souix Falls. So why, oh, why God, aren't dentists and other professionals interested in putting their address or some information about where they work on their site? Why do they fight us when we tell them it would be better if they would?


World Wide Web means the whole, goddamned motherfucking World you jackhole! Unless you truly have something of interest to the whole be-damned world and actually want the whole world interested in YOU, pipe down and keep your shit focused!


And for God's sake don't yell *me* if you get traffic you weren't anticipating. For one thing we're not the only search engine out there; there are buckets full of engines who troll the web with spiders and that's probably how they found you. We won't put your site up online until we know what you're on about.


Oh, and one last thing:
DON'T WASTE MY TIME IF YOUR SITE ISN'T FUCKING LIVE! Either your shit is on and you're ready to start spending money advertising it, or fuck off. We're not a charity service.


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This rant was brought to you by the emotion "anger" the pet peeve "exploitation" and the inarticulate fury of trying to be a professional about all of this.

thank you.