racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Why didn’t I think of that before?

Anyway, what brought me to this realization is a recent issue of a lawsuit threat because a blog ranks higher than a business site for a Google search. Search Engine Journal has the skinny.

An online shoe store owner is threatening to sue a blogger Dean Hunt (DeanHunt.com) unless the blogger ‘lowers his Google ranking” for a keyword phrase that the store owner feels he deserves.
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I have been running the site for over two years and we have been ranked very highly for the search term [edited].

On Thursday morning I checked our google positions and your site is now above us for this term. I haev checked your blog and it has nothing to do with [edited], so I think it would be best all round if you remove your blog from google for this search term.

Please understand that we make our living from this, and you are just writing a blog that has nothing to do with [edited].

If you do not remove yourself from google for this search, then I will call them myself and have you removed.

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You have to understand Dean that an online business should be higher in Google than a blog.

Don’t forget that Google is a business as well, they obviously make more money from other businesses than they do from blogs, so it is in their interest that I am higher than you for certain searches.

I have also contacted my lawyer about this issue, so you should expect a letter in the post very soon.

Wow. That’s stupid, with a capital S! (That makes it Stupid, then.)

This is why I often advocate the use of blogs by businesses and companies. It helps with the image and helps boost search rankings, as well. “BLOG” standing for “better listings on Google” is very appropriate, don’t you think?

I dread the day the owners of racoma.com come knocking on my door demanding I de-optimize my blog for my surname. Or rather, I think I should look forward to that day. Maybe I can charge a gazillion bucks for racoma.net and racoma.com.ph.

Here’s what I think about designing for usability. Design your product / service / software / website with the stupid person in mind. I assure you then, that your site will be the ultimate in usability!

Of course by design, I do not mean only style, which only pertains to the aesthetic aspects of design. Design is everything about the functionality, aesthetics, and concept behind any creation.

Make things as simple as possble. Make things as usable, intuitive, and uncluttered as possible, with the stupidest of people possible in your mind. That’s unless you’re designing an aircraft control panel–but still, you have to remember that your pilot should be comfortable with controls lest you want him to crash the plane.
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It takes more effort to design with usability in mind than just putting in all the bells and whistles in one place. For one, you may have to trim down your work reasonably–in some cases, you may have to hold off on that cool feature you’d been working on for months. And in most cases, it boils down to only keeping the basic stuff (or at least reserving/hiding the snazzy stuff only for advanced users to explore). What’s important, after all, is that your creation works the way it’s intended to, and that your user won’t have to read hundreds of pages of instructions to learn how to work things.

I’m of the opinion that if something is well-designed (hopefully elegantly-designed, too), then there should be no reason for the user to RTFM.

Check it out at ForeverGeek. I do hope you usability advocates out there would agree with me on this one!