Saturday, March 29, 2008

Roy Was Here!

I came to Shrink Rap to look at the MAOI poll. Please vote on our side bar. As someone who hasn't prescribed MAO Inhibitors, I'm learning a lot from reader comments on my MAOI post (Thank you to Graham for the inspiration).

Anyway, I realized we now have search bar, Shrink Rap versus Web. Had to be Roy, just had to be. But the funny thing is that wasn't on his To Do List.

If anyone else would like to nag Roy, remind him that we recorded two podcasts with Ray DePaulo, the chairman of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins. Then remind him that we're waiting on his section of the Shrink Rap book so we can look for an agent.

Roy Was Here! He left us a search bar.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps if you type "Roy" into the search bar it will locate him to allow optimal nagging?

Roy said...

Hey, yay, don't give her any ideas.

Anonymous said...

Can I have a can of spray paint, please?

ClinkShrink said...

Wait, we already have a blog search bar and a web search box in the browser? Why do we need this?

Anonymous said...

Poor Roy. Give the poor guy a break! The last 3-person blog I enjoyed, the poor guy who was nagged by the two women he shared the blog with ended up leaving and starting his own blog. He showed them. Neither theirs nor his blog retained the same quality level. Blogs are voluntary and should be done when creativity strikes FOR FUN. This is supposed to be FUN not work and as such where does nagging even come into the picture?

Well, it's your life, but this is just my view from the sidelines.

Roy said...

Thanks for sticking up for me, TP, but it is truly well-meaning and light-hearted nagging, and I take it that way. (You should see what goes on in email... sheesh! ;-)

Yes, we do do it for fun, and some of the creative part with this, for me, is the tech side, tweaking things here and there, adding new doodads and such. I am very much a numbers person, so I love to analyze numbers and patterns and find hidden relationships.

To answer Clink, it IS a bit of duplication but there are three differences:

1. SITE-FLAVORED SEO: the new search bar uses the keywords on our site to make the hits more "site-flavored" (Google's term); thus it ranks search hits in a manner which makes it more likely you will find hits that relate to the content in Shrink Rap.

Here's what Google says about it: "Site-flavored search is an optional feature of AdSense for search that lets you customize your search results to be relevant for your site. When you use site-flavored search, our learning technology will flavor your search results to be more customized to your site's themes and topics.

For example, if you have a site about music, site-flavored search may over time begin to understand your topic and influence your search results to be more music-relevant. However, the learning technology used in site-flavored search takes time. You won't notice any changes overnight, but gradually your search results should become more relevant to your site."


2. MORE NUMBERS: If you use the new search, and click on one of the Google ads (the same google ads that appear when you do a regular search on their site), then we get paid for that hit. It's typically less than $20 per month, so it's not the money so much as yet another set of numbers for me to get psyched about. My way of staying engaged in something I like to do when there are 50 million other things pulling me in separate directions.

3. STICKINESS: It also keeps people from leaving our site when they do a search, as it opens up a new window, rather than opening in the current window and navigating away from the site.

As you can tell, I've been doing some SEO over the weekend, and thought I'd try it for a bit to see if we got any money and to see how it is received. (That should provoke a reliable nag from Dinah noting that this time could have been spent working on the book or getting the podcast done. I love her anyway.)

BTW, I discovered that ours is the #1 site when you Google "psychiatry blog" or "psychiatrist blog". Googlerankings.com tells you where your website is in the search results for any search terms for Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com.

ClinkShrink said...

Therapy Patient: We all love Roy. He likes geeky things and so do I. I just like them better when they look nice too.

Sarebear said...

There's quite a few excellent reasons to have your own search and these are just a few.

But, it's nice to hear someone voice what I had been worrying about the nagging, it's as though therapy patient was in my head!

No, therapy patient wasn't and isn't me! Though I AM a therapy patient, that particular commenter isn't me.

I'm glad someone asked about this, though, and I am glad to hear the response! And glad that it was kindly answered, with respect for the concern. Woohoo.

I love nice bloggers. I just put you guys under noodleheads in my sidebar. And you might want to read my recent post, because you might see there's something up my sleeves regarding you three . . . . (bwahahahahahahahcoughchokequckquackquack quackquackquackquackquack . . . .

ha, it just turned April 1 . . . . just ducky, ain't I? but you are noodleheads, and read the post! If you dare. Hee.)

Sarebear said...

Well, I can April Fool's Day one day early. The whole point of April Fool's is to be foolish. So, one day early is my thang, I say.

That, and my brain/mouth (or, in this case, brain/hands) connection, as I've been saying today, is on dial-up . . . . .

oh, and for REAL, the word verify I just got is qckrfnyq . . . .i must be qcking up, ring for a ny quack, I mean, therapist, quick! Dr. Deb Serani is a good one! hee hee hee.

I can't believe a quack word verify came up just at this time ha ha.