Not Much about "When"

Everybody tells you what. Most also add who and where. Some add how, and a few explain why. But of the journalist's whatwhenwherewhowhyhow basic information principle, I suspect that when gets by far the shortest shrift.

The hosts of this blogsite, bless their hearts, have noted in their help screens that this blog, like any web page, will be searched by Google and other search engines (unless I change the preference settings). When I began June 12, I naively assumed that such search would happen in something less than geological time. After all, this site is Google's blogging site. But no one promised when the googlebug would crawl my site.

A bit of surfing enlightened me about my chances of being read by humans anytime soon: not too good. The hosts tried to provide readers from fellow blogspot bloggers with their profiles. There, the idea is that by listing your interests, you will be listed with others who have listed an identical interest, and with a little logic you can pull up their blogs also.
Since there doesn't seem to be a list of blogs on blogspot, that seems to be the only way to find anyone else's ideas. (I could be wrong about this; please forgive my newbieness and enlighten me if I am.)

But though a new blog on blogspot is available in minutes, chances are it won't be read for some time. It seems like having set up a lemonade stand in the middle of the desert. Even if the lemonade is good, it could be awhile before the parking lot is full. The googlebug hasn't crawled this way as of this post, to my knowledge, either automatically or by my request directly.

In fairness, I've looked up a few blogs by date of their postings and notice that eventually the engines do get around to it. It's just a matter of not knowing when, and no one suggesting how long it might take. A few have said that some sites are never listed at all. I guess it isn't as automatic as the help menus suggest.

I got an automatic reply from Google that suggested I was basically impatient, and could speed up the chances of the spider visit by getting my blog linked on more sites and by making it more interesting. Hmm. Thanks for your personalized critique, O Great Wizard, and never mind the man behind the curtain. I'm learning: automatic replies on the internet are very courteous and prompt, instantaneous, in fact--and can afford to be. There's nothing behind them. No one minding the store.

But I really can't complain about my costs so far in this experiment of writing whatever I want online. True to Blogger.com's word, they have been free. And they have indeed done a great job of making it easy and attractive to start blogging for anyone who wants a web page. What few limits there are are ample and reasonable. It seems a little roundabout to get to other bloggers so far, but it's probably my inexperience showing.

So when will The Spider come crawling? Perhaps, like the preachers told us, when I least expect it.