by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/02/08 09:46 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/02/08/7505685.aspx
So Leili sent me some email yesterday.
I've known her for a few years now. She works on the .NET globalization team and I reported to her husband a few years back when the World Ready Guides were the World Ready Guys -- the alias now forwards to an entirely different one that I am on, I guess you could way they are World Ready Gone now? :-)
Anyway, Leili (I wonder if her name means the same thing in Persian as it does in Hebrew? Riddle me a good time to ask that question!) had been forwarded an article entitled The Best Time To Do Everything by Michael Kaplan (the same text as this article, in fact) and she wondered
Did you write this article? It’s very interesting. Did you really interview 200 people?
I had to break the news that it wasn't me (this other one write a book with the same title). It did help her figure out one issue troubling her:
...I was wondering if it was you. I thought you didn’t have that much free time for non work related stuff...
But the truth is that there are many Michael Kaplan's out there in the world.
In fact, as I go off to (in the words of Mike Freed on Love Monkey) Google myself, I found out something interesting (for some values of interesting, this is not the wort of thing I do all that much!).
Windows Live Search finds two that are me in position #29 for my mostly defunct cimpany site and #30 and #32 for the blog (see it here), while Google gives me three in the top five including the top two slots (see it here), which I suppose means that Google find me more relevant than Microsoft -- or at least Live Search -- does. Admittedly I did miss a meeting with the Search folks while I was in India so maybe it was a punitive downgrade in the rankings. :-)
For other sites, ask.com puts my mostly defunct company site first, my out of print book second and fifth, and the blog ninth. And Yahoo puts the blog third and fourth and the defunct website fifth. And AltaVista puts the blog in the sixth and seventh positions with the defunct website eighth.
Though all kidding aside, it might be fascinating to actually analyze these results in full for say the first hundred entries on both to see what makes a person "important" in these different search engines. Not really a scientific study reverse engineering the technical process behind their ratings but a pseudo-scientific study that assumes the rankings are based on personal preference of those good friends Dr. Google, Dr. Live, Dr. Ask, Dr Yahoo, and Dr. AltaVista, and the importance they place on various achievements in life.
One would have to ignore some of the problems like the overall importance or Britney Spears in such results, of course. But it might still be entertaining.
On the other hand, I think I'd be happier being farther down the list anyway. The whole cool factor issue makes me wonder if it would be better to be harder to find. Blogs seem to take on a life of their own, and as far as I can tell the other Michael Kaplan's book doesn't say anything about the best time to blog!
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