As you may have noticed, last week I decided to change the primary domain for this blog from jeremyturner.info to jeremyturner.net. As previously reported The Goolge has held a ranking grudge against dot info domains ever since GoDaddy had a fire sale on them a while back. Conceptually I still thought that jeremyturner dot info is more appropriate for this site but I realized that I may be hindering my progress towards my ultimate goal. Jeremyturner.net has always redirected to this site, but we all know that redirects don’t add up to much on The Google. So I went through all of the necessary steps with my hosting provider, temporarily removing subsomains and redirects, and changing the redirect and DNS info with my domain registrar. I also used this plugin to do a super find/replace in my wordpress database, changing all instances of jeremyturner.info to jeremyturner.net. Worked like a charm and was much easier than going through the pages one by one to fix all of the broken links.

This is a good time to bring up the importance of a Google Webmaster Tools account. From here I was able to sumit a new sitemap for my new URL, and more imporantly I was able to easily identify the pages of my .info site that The Google had in it’s index. The reason this is important is that once I changed my domain, these links would no longer be valid. They would redirect to a 404 “page not found” page on my new site. Furthermore, none of the pages of my new site had been indexed yet so it would be like starting from scratch. This is where the magic of the 301 redirect and the .htaccess file come in. I’m not going to go in to a tutorial here, but the practical upshot is that I was able to identify all the pages previously indexed by The Google and redirect them individually to their corresponding new pages on the dot net site. Designating the redirect as a 301 tells the Googlebot that the page has moved permenantly and that The Google should update it’s index to reflect this. This is a much more responsible technique than just yanking your site and/or changing your URL, and insures the transition runs smoothly. I was able to continue on right where I left off with whatever minimal traction I had gained with The Google.

Speaking of traction, I’ve written previously about jeremyturner.com’s fall from grace because of mistakes made while updating the content of the site, among other things. I’m not sure if he even cares about this (he should be targeting queries like “staying in business” and such rather than his own name since his site has shifted focus) but I am sure happy to know that since my change from dot info to dot net I have effectively replaced his site in The Google’s SERP. Your results may vary though, as The Google will change your search results according to your search history if you are logged in with a Google account (like Gmail.)

I think the moral of the story here is obvious: you simply shouldn’t be using a .info TLD for your domain if you are trying to get anywhere with The Google.

“Blogging is like masturbating into a mirror while you videotape yourself so you can watch it later while you masturbate.” -Lewis Black

Hello mirror, this is Jeremy Turner and I have a question. Why? Seriously, what the hell is this? In case you don’t want to bother following the link to jeremyturner.com, let me just describe it to you. It’s sole content is a picture of a bug-eyed dog with the accompanying copy “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it sure helps!” Seriously, why even bother? Why register jeremyturner.com every year, for only one year, like two days before it expires? I know this is happening because I paid almost twenty bucks to GoDaddy.com to have them purchase it for me the moment it expired. And just when I got my hopes up. BAM! Another year of torture. At least change the picture once in a while.

A more pertinent question might be why, why does The Google rank this page so freakin’ high? Today jeremyturner.com the number three result for jeremy turner. Just goes to show you what kind of influence a TLD (”Top Level Domain” like .com or .org, as opposed to the lowly .info) will get you, even if all you have to show the world is a ripped-off image from an online greeting card company. Hey Jeremy, The early-2000s called and they want their Photoshop gimmick back!

So who is this other Jeremy Turner? What do I know about him? From checking the registration info for the domain I found an @happyballs.com email. Happyballs.com is the “The” Antennaball Superstore. According to the “About Us” on happyballs.com, Jeremy Turner co-founded happyballs.com with his wife and their dog, “Rascal.” Not nearly as exciting as you’d expect, but obviously dude was on the “ball” when it comes to registering domains, otherwise happyballs.com would not be nearly as SFW as it is now. And damn if he didn’t find his niche. I wonder if antenna balls are recession proof?

I never really understood the appeal of antenna balls. I mean sure, I “get” that people think they are cute, but I always thought that their sole reason for existing was to be stolen by bored teenagers. Go ahead and keep that virtual shopping cart filled with antenna balls and denial. “Oh how cute, this GI Jack (Green Hat) antenna ball totally won’t get stolen the minute I leave my car in the Trader Joe’s parking lot!”  At HappyBalls.com, you can fill your life with adorable little styrofoam disappointments, all sure to end up flaked with dirt weed, crammed in to the backpack of a 14 year old skateboarder from the apartment building down the street. And when the owner of the Forester you’re parked next to drops her groceries and asks just what the hell are you doing on your back scraping your arms underneath their car, will you have the courage to tell her?

In a way Jeremy, you are an inspiration. I’ve clicked on the link for this site again and again, first in amusement then in frustration, then again to research this post. If you are reading, please don’t take me too seriously. I’m sure you are a nice guy and we do share the same faddish surname. Happyballs.com is acutally an OK site, which is what what makes jeremyturner.com even more of a disgrace. Your story is the great American “move to Rancho Cucamonga and start a small-business in your garage” success story. Your use of our URL is a great American FAIL. Do know that I sincerely wish you would do something, anything more with our URL than you are doing now. Feel free to take that bug-eyed dog off of your site and post something worthwhile. Even if it’s just a new picture, or better yet a link to my site. Thanks.

This is Jeremy Turner, and I’ve been slacking off a bit on the blog posts the last two weeks. One of the reasons for this is that I am now an iPhone carrying member of the doucherati (I hoped that I had coined the term, but was slapped in the face with yet another domain that’s being squandered). After a month of paralyzing  pre-buyers remorse—Do I really need this? Will I use it? Is it worth the price? Will I be a total douche afterwards?—it’s taken less than a week for me not to be able to imagine my life without it. Pathetic, I know but that’s just how I roll. Besides, I’ve gone far too long without being able to tune out the world and play Tetris at a moments notice. It was the only thing my last PDA ended up being any good for.

Another thing I can’t imagine is viewing websites on the damn thing. I mean, it’s cool and all that you can see “real” websites on your “phone”, however all the zooming in, out, scroll left right, etc., makes me dizzy. I am an information junkie, and this is just too much work. That is why sites like The Google, Yellowbook.com, and others have either created iPhone optimized versions of their websites especially for the mobile version of Safari. And now I am happy to announce that I this functionality on my site as well.

The Wordpress plugin is called iWPhone and it’s a combination plugin and theme. Install the plugin and when users visit you from their super slick little pocket machine they get an optimized version of your content. Pretty neat if you ask me. And a whole lot easier than creating a whole new “mobile” version of your website. Check it out for yourself, if you are lucky enough to be near an iPhone. Just fire up Mobile Safari and type in jeremyturner.net. I know this isn’t going to help me out as far as my Google ranking, but I just think it’s neat and thought I would share.

EDIT: There’s another plugin called WPtouch that accomplishes pretty much the same thing, but seems to have more features, like the option to view the site normally if you choose. I will be playing with both of these for a while so I can’t say for sure which one you’ll be seeing.

I’m Jeremy Turner, and here’s to me being cited as a credible source someday. 

Knol is power?

Google launches a Wikipedia competitor that instantly ranks number one for about one-third of it’s pages.

Online Marketing Tips

Just what it says. Not really SEO but whatever.

And I was just wondering why my Google Webmaster account showed that none of my pages were indexed by The Google, even though I was obviously showing up in the search results. SEO Roundtable has my answer!

Wordpress SEO

Great article on basically everything that I’m doing to try and get this blog rolling. I definitely used this article as a blueprint before I veered dangerously off course following my own peculiarities. I even imagined myself writing a post like this to school y’all after I became master of the blogosphere, but alas it’s already been written so this is all you get. I may be revisiting some of the suggested techniques and plugins though.

As always, leave a comment if you want to get your passive-aggressive argument on.

Hi there. Jeremy Turner here, and my ranking on The Google is officially confusing. In my last status update post I was happily sitting at number eleven on The Google, so close to the first page I could smell the stink that is jeremyturner.com. In preparation for an update on some of the mistaken identity emails I’ve received to join a fantasy football league, I entered the query jeremy turner into google on my computer at work (on my scheduled lunch break, of course) and much to my surprise there I was, results number eight and nine, sitting right below that open sore of a website, jeremyturner.com. I was all excited to share the news, so when I fired up my laptop at home to write the update, I did a quick search and found that my rank was right were I had left it, on page two. Weird. So I went back this morning and checked again at work (of course well before my “shift” started) and what do you know—I’m actually beating jeremyturner.com! This makes perfect sense to me since I am actually publishing content while, well go ahead and check it out for yourself, but suffice to say he’s not doing much with the site. Not sure why there is a discrepancy, but it sure makes me feel better about surfing the internet at work!

Suck It!

If anybody out there is actually reading this, can you explain why this might be? I’m in the same basic geographic area, on the same network (Comcast), and the results are the same wether or not I’m logged in to The Google or not. Curiouser and curiouser…

Hi there. Just wanted to post an update regarding my continued email mistaken identity problem. Last week I received an invitation via emal for Jeremy Turner to join a fantasy football league. The same as last year. From somebody I don’t know. This email was obviously not intended for me, but rather for my doppeljeremy. Over the course of the next week I received five “RE: Fantasy Footbal” messages, one lamenting the potential non-participation of a specific colleague. If he’s not to participate, then “Who will act a fool?” the respondent wondered. Another potential fantasy leaguer responded “RE: Fantasy Football” that they were “In,” and also proposed a unique contingency plan in case a specific colleague was not to participate. They offered up the son of a (presumed) common friend in his stead, to ensure they fill their “Jewish quota.” Confused. Me too. The only one that made a lick of sense was the “I’m in….Hell Yeah!” Indeed.

 I replied back to everybody on the last email, simply stating that I was not who they thought I was and offered up the correct address of the person they were trying to include in their online festivities. Haven’t heard back.

The other night I was troubleshooting an email address for a client by sending test messages to myself. I inadvertently sent three emails to doppeljeremy. I sent one last one to apologize. Again I’m not really sure if that’s an ironic experience or not, or maybe just a humbling one, but it is what it is, as they say.

Jeremy Turner here with another GRSU (Google Rank Status Update, but feel free to pronounce it “gru-sue”). Rather than write the thousand words, I’ll just show you a picture. At first glance, I’m number one(!) on Ask.com. 

On further inspection you’ll see that that’s actually a Google Adwords ad showing up above the organic results. I guess Ask.com doesn’t really care about tricking people into clicking on paid results. “Look, we put stupid little binoculars next to the real results, so backoff!” They really should indicate that those first two are ads. How sad. What is also sad is that my site doesn’t show up before I lose complete interest in searching. My ad however shows up on every result page, at the top and the bottom of the page. Now I know why I don’t use Ask.com, and why you shouldn’t either. I would be interested in figuring out how to get listed up top after “Narrow:” though. Must investigate further.

Ok, now on to Yahoo, where I am still number two and three however my first result is still for my old iWeb site that i thought i removed from Yahoo’s index. I sure hope that the tens of people searching for jeremy turner every month aren’t confused. Oh well, I’ll have to double check if I removed that properly. Oh, and everybody say hello to my nemesis, Jeremy Turner-landscape photographer (JTLP or “jit-lip” if you please). Again, need to figure out what’s going on with the “Also try:” links. I assume they are calculated from a history of what people ended up clicking on after they searched for Jeremy Turner.

Here’s where I am on MSN. Number one and two baby yeah! And they’re both from the same current site. MSN there’s hope for you yet. Hopefully the second round Microsoft/Yahoo merger talks will straighten out the inconsistencies in their search results. I know the deal’s all about advertising, and MSN Live search will most likely be phased out, but a boy can dream can’t he?

Finally, here I am on The Google. Number twelve. Perilously close to the first SERP, and number two on the second. Jit-lip can wait; looks like I’ll be focusing on taking out a burgeoning sports writer next. Should be fun.

Howdy. I’m Jeremy Turner, bay area graphic designer and narcissistic blogger, and this here is my second post in a series on the other Jeremy Turner’s that are stealing my proverbial thunder on The Google. I decided to write about “death metal” guitarist Jeremy Turner next because last week while trying to convince my co-workers that I was the touring guitarist for a band called Cannibal Corpse, I noticed that his Wikipedia entry was marked for deletion. I really should have taken a screenshot to go along with this post, because the warning has since disappeared and you have only my word. Luckily for the both of us, my word is bond.

If there is one thing I always loved about the death metal genre, it is the inspiration and hope to be found in the lyrics, song titles, and band names. Nothing says “empowerment” quite like the names Panzerchrist, Prostitute Disfigurement, or Pig Destroyer. And those are just three of the P’s! I am totally naming our next cat Panzerchrist. But I’ve digressed. Back to Jeremy. His band Origin’s self titled debut from 2000 opens with the song “Lethal Manipulation (The Bonecrusher Chronicles). Yeah, I guess I would have trouble giving this flower of a sonnet but just one name. It begins with this stanza:

Bones begin to break, smash your fuckin’ face
Beaten, you plead to live
Born to mutilate, live to desecrate, die, I will kill again
Adrenaline rush, pumping through my veins, boiling in my blood
Methodically, this hunt has just begun!

Hey, we’ve all got issues man. I would post the entire lyrics to the song and comment on them verse by verse, but the idea’s been done before and, well, I think you get the idea. If you must, here’s a link to the lyrics of the instant sing-a-long classic, Vomit You Out. Wow, Seriously?

Full disclosure time: I’ve never heard a second of Origin’s music. I really don’t feel I have to. I’m just here to meddle in the death of his Google presence. Ha! Title pun justified! Anyway, I’m pretty sure I heard some Cannibal Corpse in high school the sound of which has haunted me to this moment. If you are curious though, there’s a link right here.

Jeremy Turner is also responsible for the guitar sound of the band Unmerciful. In a fitting twist of irony (or is it just an “unfortunate coincidence?” I can never tell.), I predict Death Metal JT will be Unmercifully Beaten in my quest for the top Google rank. In a double-helix of irony I’m pretty sure that if we met in person he could easily kick my ass. If that happens I’m totally changing all these links to “nofollow.” Blogging from the edge, this is Jeremy Turner wishing you good night.

The emails sent to this other Jeremy Turner all have a common thread. They are sent from UC Davis or related domains, revolve around the the subject of UC Davis, “Aggies” alumni events, the fraternity Alpha Gamma Rho, or any combination of these criteria. I wondered if the people i replied to thought it was just him being a jerk. Was he a jerk? Did they ever confirm with him that they might have the wrong email? Maybe he was such a jerk that they’d rather not ask. I soon stopped trying to respond and just started deleting these messages when they popped up in my inbox.

Then one day I received an email with a bunch of pictures of what could only be described as “dude’s partying.” It looked like some sort viral marketing. Something about the lighting and the fact that they all had the same green beer cans in every picture made me paranoid. This paranoia was bolstered by the fact that one of the previous mistaken emails contained a full Visa credit card number for “me” to use. This was really unnerving. I could only imagine if that email was supposed to go to me and went to some stranger instead. I also quickly imagined that it was some sort of set-up. The paranoid angel sitting on my left shoulder won the brief debate with his counterpart on the right. I deleted it (almost) immediately. Was somebody that stupid to send a credit card number without being 100% sure they had the email right? My experience says “Yes, Jeremy, some people are that stupid.” Or was this the culmination of some sort of bizarre hoax, luring me in with the familiarity of these emails over the past year, lulling me into a state of vulnerability? I started collecting the emails again.

One day several months ago while scanning my email I  saw the “Mistaken Identity” folder I’ve been archiving all of this in and decided once and for all to see if this was a real person or not. In hindsight, I should have done this much sooner as it would have saved me some of the paranoid delusions that materialized in my head after receiving strangely lit photos from those who would not respond to my warnings. Almost instantly I clicked on this link. Alpha Gamma Rho? Check. UC Davis? Check. Jeremy Turner? Check. And his email. Right there for all of his fraternity brothers and alumni sisters to see. It’s even written in camelCase to neatly point out the middle initial “R” in his name. This was way too easy to find and I am still kicking myself for not doing this much much sooner. What to do now.

Several months have passed since I found this link to Jeremy Turner. Last night I finally bit the bullet and emailed him regarding this situation, quickly summarizing what had been going on and giving him a list of email addresses of his friends and colleagues that had his address wrong. I also offered to forward him the emails I still had archived. To my surprise he emailed me back this afternoon and was extremely apologetic and asked to have those emails forwarded, so I did. Tiny weird mystery solved rather quickly and painlessly.

When I started this blog I had a snarky, wise-ass post already written about this situation. Considering how things have turned out I decided to write this one instead. Jeremy if you are reading this, please post a comment and tell me what your middle name is. Thanks!