Briefly interrupting the Gold Lion hardback posts, just an update for those of you who've been following the saga of Existential Ennui's move from a "blogspot.com" URL to its own "www.existentialennui.com" address – and yes, hard as it may be to believe, I know for a fact that some Existential Ennui readers are at least vaguely interested in this stuff.
A week-and-a-half ago I revealed that migrating to a new domain name had badly affected Existential Ennui's visibility in search engines – basically, because EE had a new URL, it wasn't showing up in searches anymore – and asked that you all help out by clicking on your favourite EE posts. Well I'm pleased to be able to report that EE's search engine reputation is now slowly recovering: as I write, if you google "existential ennui", this blog is once again on the first page of results (although not yet the top hit, as it was previously) and under its new URL – a reliable indicator that things are moving in the right direction. More importantly than that, however – because the percentage of people googling "existential ennui" in order to wind up at an esoteric books blog is probably fairly low (and I realise here I'm opening up the can of worms marked, "Why did you call this blog Existential Ennui again...?") – individual posts are starting to move up the rankings when you google, say, Sarah Gainham, or P. M. Hubbard, or Desmond Cory, or Anthony Price – again sporting the new URL. So thank you to everyone who took the trouble to give us a damn good clicking.
Before we all go getting too excited, though – and I know how easy that can be when discussing SEO – often EE's posts on those authors don't start showing up until the second, third or fourth page – or even beyond – of results, where once they were all page one stars, so there's obviously still work to do – a supposition borne out by EE's behind-the-scenes stats, where I can see that traffic from searches is beginning to pick up again, but still isn't anywhere near pre-domain-switch levels. Again, what will help is some clickage on your part, either directly on posts via the EE Archive, or better yet via searches – for the aforementioned Gainham, Hubbard, Cory or Price, perhaps, or for Donald E. Westlake, or Patricia Highsmith, or any of the other authors or books I've written about that might be particular favourites of yours (check out Abiding Preoccupations in the right-hand column for a guide). As I mentioned last time, visibility is a big factor in Existential Ennui's raison d'etre (oo la la), and anything further you can do to help will be hugely appreciated.
On the two other URL migration matters I highlighted, the fleeting "two blogs" syndrome thankfully corrected itself; and with the aid of commenters Book Glutton, Chris (not sure which one) and a few other folk, I've managed to flesh out my Other Fine Blogs blogroll (at bottom of right-hand column), which, you'll recall, was stripped of its content during the switchover. I'm certain, however, that there are still blogs I originally had listed that I haven't yet reinstated, so do please, as before, let me know if you can think of any.
Incidentally, on much of the above, Nitecruzr's The Real Blogger Status proved invaluable in ironing out issues, as did Nitecruzr himself (thank you too, sir), who can usually be found haunting the Google Blogger forums.
Oh, and as an unrelated aside, I've also managed to get the new Twitter widget working (the widget offered by Blogger had stopped functioning); you should now be able to see my feed in the right-hand column below the Existential Ennui Facebook page widget. Whether or not it will continue to work is, I'm afraid, above my pay grade, but we'll see.
Right then. Back to the books...
All photos copyright © 2012 Rachel Day
Something slightly nightmarish about those piles of books - a sense that the one you'd want (one you'd been searching for years to find)would be at the bottom and removing it would result in your demise as the entire lot toppled over, Howard's End like.
ReplyDeleteHaha, well those photos were actually taken in the book maze installation that was situated in the Southbank Centre over the summer. I spotted the BBC's John Simpson in there while I was wandering round.
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