What does it take to exist in this world? It was brought to my attention that I don’t have a great Google ranking. A quick search for Jason Paul brings up a page of other Jason Pauls. Actually I do sort of appear on that page. The last Jason Paul is me but it’s a link to my old and now obsolete site which I still keep online because I’m not ready to deal with the volumes of data I have stored there. This site, jasonpaul.net, is probably on page 2. Who are these other Jason Pauls?
Topping the list is 20 year old Jason Paul from Frankfurt, Germany who is dedicated to the sport of tricking which I only just learned about based on his profile. You can read about tricking and probably come to the same conclusion that I did. With nearly 5,000 Facebook friends and superhuman athletic ability, this kid will probably be number one for a long time to come. So I go to see whose number 2 and it’s a cluster of Youtube videos…for this Jason Paul’s acrobatics…and uh…wow! I can honestly say I’m a Jason Paul fan (my own prospects for fame declining by the minute). This kid is a real ninja:
Ok, so finally we get down to the next Jason Paul…and oh dear. It’s a website for Jason Paul Design. That’s interesting…because I’m a designer. On first glance of Jason Paul’s website I can breathe a sigh of relief because it’s a very different design aesthetic than I would employ. If you’ve worked with me in a design capacity you’ll know that I’ve done my utmost to retire the use of Helvetica (Arial). Jason Paul is using Arial and a lot of very tight leading and tracking, a combination of things not in my aesthetic toolbox. He presents himself as Advertising & Marketing which are two words I’ve stricken from my descriptions (although admittedly there is overlap) and it seems his work leans more to the promotional side of design. A little sleuthing from his vcard links reveals that Jason Paul is really Jason Mullins from South Carolina. Well that’s ok…am I really Jason Paul? If you don’t know my surname then you probably don’t need to.
The third Jason Paul is a fashion photographer. The overlap here is that his bio says he’s in New York City. The photo on his about page is really badass…such intensity. I’m not writing this to critique other Jason Paul’s but I must say that Jason Paul the fashion photographer desperately could use a new website. His current website is in Flash which, as we know, is terrible for the social web (and for interactivity in general). It’s also considered bad for Google to find your site but this Jason Paul has bypassed the laws of SEO and still managed to hold the number 3 rank despite the use of Flash. Jason Paul fashion photographer, I strongly encourage you to upgrade your site to WordPress. At bare minimum choose one of the many photo WordPress themes available for free on the web and do the content management work to get your photos into that system. You will thank me for this.
Number four is Mr. JaSoN PauL Chad. JaSoN PauL is somewhat of a mystery. I could call him (which reveals that he is also in NYC!) or email him, but can’t dig him up on the social web. He doesn’t explicitly say what he does, but I’ve deduced that he is also a web designer. A closer inspection of his site and his work shows that JaSoN PauL is still building static website pages in the old way, with HTML tables. Hopefully he’s made the leap into CSS and his site will soon reflect the benefit of acquiring that essential web design/development skill.
Number five on the Google rank list is entertainment photographer Jason Paul Roberts. I’m glad that the name Jason Paul has such great representation in the arts. It looks like Jason Paul Roberts is doing fairly well for an individual on the Social Web with his Facebook page receiving over 1400 Likes. His website is a little antiquated because it’s done in static html pages yet also acts as his portfolio and blog. It must be tedious to keep this up-to-date. I have been there yes I have. I’d have to also recommend to Jason Paul Roberts that he consider upgrading his site to a WordPress CMS. (Yes I know, I’m zealous about WordPress and the previous post ‘Why I Use WordPress‘ seemed to put me in a position as the sole defender of WordPress as an exemplary content management system…but I digress.)
Number six is disappointing. It’s the outdated resume (2006) of some Jason who goes by the name jigl who is not even a Jason Paul. It’s results like these where I must go off on a tangent about how Google could really do a lot better. Google search obviously is not that smart and has a long way to go. It’s no wonder that Google is held hostage by black hat SEO charlatans who dedicate their lives to gaming the system. It seems to me that the system is not hard to manipulate.
There are two things I despise about Google search. The first is that I always have to reset the search date because Google defaults to giving me old results. Apparently it puts a larger premium on page views than freshness and relevancy. If a crap page has been sitting on the web for a decade it will naturally have a higher rank even though it’s completely useless. I always have to click ‘Show Search Tools’ which thanks to Google’s terrible UX and contempt for design is always a pain to find. Then I usually end up selecting ‘Past year’ in the custom range. Why can’t it just default to past year instead of results that are old as sh*t? Beyond Black Hats, how may sites are reaping the benefits of higher rankings in Google when they really don’t deserve them (I’m tempted to name names but I wont.)
The second thing I hate is crap sites that rank on Google that are only created by black hat SEOs as receptacle’s for backlinks to game the Google system into ranking other sites. I don’t think Google likes this either. What this amounts to is an SEO bubble which Google could easily burst. They made an example out of JC Penney but I don’t think it’s enough. They need to fundamentally fix their system so that SEO no longer can be manipulated to rank sites that haven’t earned it. My personal feeling is that SEO should not even be a job. All SEO should connote is making well formatted websites in HTML. HTML writing formats should be taught in school to kids. H1, H2, H3 tags, ul, li and p tags etc. Hopefully RDF will start to mean something in the near future. If we learn to describe the content we write correctly the web and Google will actually be enriched ten-fold instead of being polluted by bad content.
Number seven is Jason Paul Peterson, concert pianist. A musician! What can I say? Jason Paul Peterson is very accomplished. I wish my music ability went beyond Rock and Roll and music sequencing but I doubt I’ll be able to dedicate the time to actually learning to play the piano correctly anytime soon. For the record I did study music theory and composition for a brief period with a Julliard professor a decade ago and those concepts have never left me (although I have employed them into pop writing which is probably not where he would have wanted to see me make use of them). Jason Paul Peterson’s site does look well made as it’s built in PHP so I must assume he’s got some sort of content management system. The copyright date is 2007 and the design does look very dated and could benefit from an overhaul. Of course I would recommend a certain CMS which would no doubt improve the state of Jason Paul Peterson’s site but I’ll let you fill in the blanks.
Number eight, finally something different. Jason Paul is an accomplished private chef in Hawaii as his domain name explicitly communicates. The design of his site looks outdated more so because the images look over optimized. It was built in CSS although on static HTML pages. As a brochure website I’d bet this site is working out quite well for Jason Paul the chef.
Number nine..which Jason Paul is this? It’s me! My old site which I previously used to get work and was probably started 7 years ago. I won’t be taking this down but I decided to put a vcard up on the homepage to direct people to my more contemporary sites and social media destinations. I am Jason Paul and at least I’m on page one of Google search in some capacity. Hopefully this site will start to climb in rank. I doubt I’ll replace trickster Jason Paul of Germany as it seems he’s on his way to becoming a very deserving bonafide celebrity. Ok, I’ve had enough of Jason Paul and so have you.