Having a blog with a good PageRank, as explained in the previous post, has its benefits. But it also comes with somewhat of a curse.

Darren Rowse gives a good example:

You see when your blog ranks well it means that you can become highly ranked for many search terms that you may not necessarily wish to be highly ranked for.

For example I remember the day that I found I was one of the most highly ranked sites on Google for ‘Spanish Porn’ (I’d used the words separately on a post). Earlier this week a friend found my site in a search engine when he did a search for ‘bubble wrap’. Another time I wrote a post with a critique on one aspect Australian church and became the number 1 result for people searching for that church. Another time a friend asked me to link to his blog and I became more highly ranked for his name than he did. This is also how I came to be quoted in the New York Times for being an expert on Lord of the Rings and it’s spiritual themes and in an Aussie paper as an expert on Spam. All of these situations illustrate both the power of a highly ranked site but also the responsibility that one with such power to blog wisely.

I’ve had the same experiences. On blogaholics, I often write about things I think are funny or weird. Two examples: corset piercing and camel porn.

The latter was an intentional experiment a la Boing Boing to see if using words such as “porn” would spike our traffic. Well, it was successful in driving traffic, but apparently just for that specific phrase. And, yes, people search it. Often.

Anyway, the first one on corset piercing was just a picture and me asking why the heck anyone would want that. Well, they do. And, I expect that post to be popular now for many months, short as it is.

So, on the plus side my article on Canadian identity continues to be strong, and this profiles me well as a writer. On the negative side, I get associated now with camel porn and corset piercing. But, it’s all a part of the game and is interesting to watch.

Technorati Tags: serendipity, pagerank