Disclaimer: If you want deep political insight, skip this post. I'm just fooling around because I'm bored.Know what I missed when I was reviewing mayoral candidate websites? Meta tags containing keywords!
Okay, there are good reasons for that. While this is no longer my area of expertise, my impression is that nobody really uses meta keywords anymore, because search engines no longer really care about them. To quote the always incredibly accurate Wikipedia:
37 leaders in search engine optimization concluded in April 2007 that the relevance of having your keywords in the meta-attribute keywords is little to none.As usual, Wikipedia has taken all the fun out of everything. Jerks.
Never mind that! Luckily for us, one mayoral candidate did bother to populate his pages with a whole bunch of pointless meta keywords. Thanks Ted!
Perhaps in his role as "Teacher of computer related courses", Mr. DeSalvatore has picked up some secret nobody else knows concerning the relevance of meta keywords, because he has bunches of them. Take that, Wikipedia smartypants!
And perhaps by examining these sort-of-hidden keywords we can take a peek into the mind of the "thermometer of Hell Zone". Clever, no?
If you're going to go look for yourself, ignore the front page. It just has a few boring ones like "Fitchburg 01420 Mayor" and "01420 mayor Fitchburg". Because people often refer to the town as "Fitchburg 01420", just like that shitty TV show that was on in the 90's with that girl who had the one eye like an inch above her other eye.
Also, while I'll admit that the word "Massachusetts" is tricky to spell, but it seems odd that it's totally absent from the keywords. Hell, even "MA" isn't there. But if the search engines don't care (and they don't), then why should I?
There is an interesting bit though, and it's the keywords stuck on the other pages of this site. I'll just paste them here for your amusement:
"01420, mayor, fitchburg, DeSalvatore, Mayor, Fitchburg, 01420, Mylott, Donnelly, Wong, election, elect, Sentinel Enterprise, Ward 4, Crime, homeless, Putnam Place, Unitil, energy, utility costs, duel tax, change, challenge, Save Fitchburg, blight, trash, graffiti, white goods, illegal dumping, Quality of life, safety, 01420, mayor, fitchburg"Holy crap that's a bunch of odd keywords!
From first glance, it's obvious he really likes that zip code, and I don't blame him. It is quite a fetching zip code, what with its rounded ends and powers of two. We should really promote our zip code as one of the perks of living in Fitchburg, come to think of it. So no points lost there!
I must admit, I'm a little hurt to see he stuck the Save Fitchburg blog in the keywords and not Progressive Fitchburg. I hold the number one spot on a Google search for "'ted desalvatore' mayor"! How about a little cross-promotion, Ted? I'll bring in the search engines and you just keep acting crazy so I have something to write about. I'll even keep the links to tedforchange.com and change4ted.com to a minimum.
Moving on, listing your opponents (aside from Ronald Dionne) seems like an odd move, but whatever...
One big concern. What the fuck is a "duel tax"? Is the government going to start taxing my duels? Because I only duel for honor, not to line the pockets of some big-city bureaucrat! Who even gets taxed? The loser's dead, the winner is not someone to be trifled with (he just killed the loser, after all). Neither party is an ideal target for taxation. This seems like an odd platform to support.
What's really striking to me is the way Mr. DeSalvatore promotes himself though. Now, if I were going to make a website to try to get people to vote for me I'd probably put a bunch of my positives in the keywords (which I wouldn't do anyway, but you get the point). Not Ted though! He likes to "focus on what's bad" and here's where it shows!
What's bad? Well, judging from the keywords I'd say "Crime, homeless, utility costs, duel tax, blight, trash, graffiti, white goods, and illegal dumping." Words that are apparently synonymous with DeSalvatore!
"White goods"???
Seriously, "white goods"? Did he just pick random words from the text on the page or what?
Anyway, there you have it. A meta-review of Ted DeSalvatore's meta keywords that borders on self-mockery! I'll be back with a new review of Lisa Wong's new, improved website in a day or two.
3 comments:
Wow, Unicow, I thought I was the only one who looked at metatags! Thanks for the journey into DeSalvo's murky mind. Yick. Now to take a shower with goop remover to get off the green slime.
I thought his "white goods" keyword was a typo for "white trash." Interesting though isn't it that he included "homeless" in his brainfart. Or maybe that was Freudian - when he loses the election, the cash campaign contributions and his big money backers who wants to make book on how long it will take him to become homeless.
Anybody got a spare tent? I'll donate the garbage can.
Thanks for mentioning http://www.TedForChange.com and its sister site http://www.Change4Ted.com
We appreciate the plug.
DeSalvo could have done us all a favor and just put in a metatage site description "fuck Fitchburg" - that describes what he thinks about our town and its people, and it also describes what he would do to our town if he got elected.
Fat chance. We're too smart.
Even money that DeSalvo shows behind Dionne and blanks.
As you're well aware, people already think I'm you (and also Rachel, and I think Matt Straight and a few other people too). Now that they know we both look at meta tags that'll just convince them further! The gig is up!
The "homeless" bit baffles me too. The word doesn't even appear once anywhere on his site aside from that meta tag.
Ok, I'll fess up here. I'm all three of you. I'm Ted too. Ooops, I'm Mylott and Dionne. All these multiple personalities have me SO confused!
I know! I'll be UNIRACHEL! Oh that's right, "uni" means one doesn't it. :-)
Well that's three of us who know about metatags, but I'm one up on you kids. Brag, brag here - the original concept of metatags (under a different name) was developed by my team in the pre-Internet (Arpanet) days. "I could tell you more but I'd have to kill you." Quick - where's that line from?
Don't bother to ask the Al Gore question.
I hadn't thought to check the keywords because I don't use them anymore. I'm with SayNo. Save some hot water and Goo Gone for me please.
Wonder if it would help DeSalvo to blow some canned air through his ears to clear some of that stuff out!
Well, when he falls off the mountaintop I'll be happy to hand him a sandwich on his way out of town.
Shalom
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