When I first started writing my bog, I tried to get really cute with the title of my blog posts. Some of them worked, others not so much. Likewise, some of these blog posts were more of my musings and not really technical, while others I felt like getting really technical and in depth. My problem, I have since realized, is I didn’t always get the serious posts paired together with serious titles.
This thought was hammered home to me last week while reading an online message board where someone asked if there were any down and dirty write up’s about 802.11k/v/r. I didn’t know of any, but what caught my attention is that this would:
- make a really cool title for a blog post and
- if typed in a search engine might not pull up much, unless that was the title of your blog.
Recently, I participated in the CWNP CWSP JTA (for those who don’t speak acronym that is the Certified Wireless Network Professional, Certified Wireless Security Professional, Job Task Analysis.). During our three days of “discussions” one of the topics turned to how we as wireless professionals deal with products or terms that we come across in our day to day activities that we aren’t familiar with. The obvious answer is we turn to the internet and we search for what we don’t know and educate ourselves, or at least that should be the answer, in my opinion. Sometimes we turn to online message boards, like my example above, but that should really be the second or third option. Again, my opinion. If you call yourself a professional do your own searching first.
*Disclaimer: I have been known to ask my coworker something because I’m too lazy to look it, and they call me on that every time. It’s ok, our office functions like this.
As the discussion went on at the JTA, I was reminded of a sticker I saw, and still want to get, that looked like this: 
As it turns out, that links to a website (that I got the image from by the way) called lmgtfy.com and is an acronym for “Let Me Google That For You.” Why you would go to a website called that to search for something instead of just going to the actual website it references, is beyond me, but to each their own. What this does reinforce is the idea that the term “Google” has now evolved from the name of a company into an actual verb that is globally recognized as going to the internet and searching for something to find your answer. In the end, if I remember correctly, we refrained from using the term Google and instead referenced online research or something like that.
This brings me back to the title of this blog post, and my first paragraph. I realized that I have written some pretty good blog posts, and those that saw the link’s posted on Twitter probably went and read them, but if someone was searching for something on a topic I had written on, but due to my “cuteness” in my title, they will probably never see it. If the goal of your blog is to help bring knowledge and preserve your experiences for the world to relate to later, then don’t be like me. If the goal is to share your knowledge, is it really sharing if you hide that information. If your goal is to keep your information private and not to share, then be as cute and obscure as you want, just realize that your work will probably blend into the rest of the minutia on the internet and never been again.
Very similar to my thoughts on the new Wi-Fi Alliance naming scheme, what you name something really does matter. I’ve never searched for my topics or blog titles on a search engine to see how well my previous posts rank in search engines, but that’s not really my intent. Even if my previous posts really could use a new name, I’m not going to go back and edit it. If you go back and read my blog posts from the beginning, you should be able to see how I progressed as a “blogger” from the beginning to this point, and hopefully I will get better in the future. Going back and changing my previous mistakes to clean it up seems very 1984 to me, and not something I am comfortable doing.
Oh, and if the reference to 1984 doesn’t immediately “click” with you, might I suggest a quick internet search looking for a book with that title, because I’m certainly not going to “Google” it for you!
I Don't Know Squat About Networking 