If I want to find out about anything I google it first. If folks have had a bad experience with a company they talk about it online. It’s all right there, thousands of real first-hand customer experiences waiting to be considered. And it’s not just restricted to online companies either. I can’t think of the last time I saw a company I patronize mention BBB membership. I didn’t even know what the BBB logo looked like until I clicked around their website a little and found their “Seal program” (their “give us money to display our logo on your website” program).

Over the Summer, David Wallace at searchengineguide.com wrote, “This leads me to wonder how much credibility consumers actually place in BBB valuations. It would seem to me that businesses should have much more concern over what people are saying about them online.”¹ I agree.

With so many different ways for customers to praise or criticize a company or product from personal blogs, to forums, to reviews on Amazon, to Twitter, business owners are surely infinitely more concerned about their Google ranking and their reputation on social networks than any BBB report. The recent Twitter/Motrin fiasco is a great example. The Motrin website was offline all night Sunday and came back up on Monday with a public apology on their front page. Can the BBB do that?

I run honest businesses and treat my customers fairly and with respect and have an excellent reputation in exchange. I’m confident that there’s nothing the BBB could add or take away from that—for me as a business owner or for consumers looking to find out more about me or my businesses.

When was the last time you used the BBB to check out or complain about a company?

• So, Cuil. I don’t think it’ll catch on because people would rather google themselves than cuil themselves.
• The lovely and talented wife was miming typing on a computer and every so often she’d ding and hit the carriage return lever. I think that explains a lot.
• There is water on Mars. We might be able to grow plants there, transform it to support human life, and have martian babies. Yay!
• I heart librarians.
• I had to listen to a children’s version of Vertigo on Friday (you know, “uno, dos, tres, catorce”). Surprisingly, worse than the original.
• Sitting down? Move your right foot in clockwise circles. Then, while you’re doing that, draw the number 6 in the air slowly with your right hand. (via Caterina.net)
  
• I recently read Old Man’s War which was awesome. I just realized that it’s part of a trilogy but I think I may leave it because I don’t want to spoil it.
• The “food” industry spent $1.6 billion in 2006 telling kids what to eat. Soda advertisers spent seven times as much as milk advertisers.
• Danny Elfman is composing for the American Ballet Theater. Yes, that Danny Elfman. We’ve got tickets.

“Sex.” You can get to this site after clicking through every link on the prior 818 million pages. Apparently, I’m a good afterglow read. Go try it. I’ll wait.

“Bathroom tiling.” Seriously. I’m no authority but somehow I’m the fourth result. And you thought I was just a pretty face.

“Songs for parents.” For a post titled 50 songs for kids and their parents (that aren’t utter crap). I should do a follow up to that one actually. Hopefully the Miley our house has been infected with for the past few months hasn’t ruined me. (I don’t know which is worse: that I’m bothered by all the cuts at the end of Start All Over¹ or that I’m watching Miley Cyrus videos at all. Oh God help me.)

“Charlie Bucket pushing daisies.” Yes. For reasons I can’t and probably don’t want to understand, at least 50 people in the world need to know if Charlie Bucket still has the spark of life. That search phrase creeps me out because it can be interpreted as a question or a wish.

Conspicuously absent is my own name which seems strange at first only because I’m on the first page for “John Watson” (I’ll never make it past a Human Resources screen again for as long as I live). But then you realize that the only famous John Watsons were all hopeless nerds (i.e. I’m in good company) and who would be searching for them anyway when there are 818 million pages of sex.

So there you have it. I can’t really make anything of it except to say that people must be seriously concerned with sex and Charlie Bucket if they end up looking for answers here. Oh, and also that “John Watson”, as a search phrase, is no “arsebundle.”

Apparently, it was injected at some point in the past due to running an older, vulnerable version of WordPress. I do a much better job keeping up to date these days but I remember a while back I used to go months on an older version.

Just a warning: keep your WordPress installation up to date to avoid these kinds of problems. Fortunately, only two of my posts were “infected”. You can check your old posts for the same problem by searching for “iframe”.