last week, i read an article in the newspaper about small businesses who were relying on google search hits for their business, only to face financial ruin when google changed its search algorithm. they featured a shoe store that specialized in large shoe sizes. apparently this store saw a huge percentage of its sales coming in from the internet and discovered it had, by sheer luck, gotten itself into a position where it came up as the first search result when people searched on "big feet."
the small biz owner got used to the additional business, until -- you got it -- google made a change right before christmas last year and the shoe store fell several hundred places. suddenly the internet business the owner relied on disappeared. i can sympathize with the owner, but i don't think you can blame google. really the owner should be thankful for the money he made when he was at the top.
a colleague of mine pointed out that my site shows up first on google at the moment when you search on "shannon banks." i have been wracking my brain ever since learning this but can't think of a single thing to sell that might allow me to take advantage of this stroke of luck. funnily enough, the site with my name as its domain, which appears to be a site for an insurance company and probably does want to make some money from their web presence, is a few hits lower.