Total Google Searches: 6181

I actually looked through my Google web history this morning. I finally started logging into Google before searching a little while ago. Before I was paranoid that Google would recognize patterns in my searching and browsing that would indicate what I was trying to do online. Let's just say I started out in this game with my hat a little bit blacker than it is now and I figured if I searched for "content generators", Google would take that and the cpanel IP I logged into and put two and two together. I am still paranoid about searching for "paid links".

But I am going off subject. This history is a good tool. Don't have a blog and need an idea for one? Have a blog and need an idea for a post? It's all there in your history. We always hear, "Write about what you know". Well, everything you searched for in the past, you know now, right? And if you never found what you were looking for, that would be a good subject to do a little more research on and then write about.

The sheer mass of people using the internet, makes your experiences, knowledge, and questions less unique. Yes, I know, everyone is an individual. But if you go online, you are bound to find someone with your same interests, someone who is currently in the process of learning something that you already know, and chances are, someone who is taking the same route you did to find information.

The odds of two people in a room of forty having the same birthday is about 40%. This is called the birthday paradox. It doesn't seem logical, but it's true. The internet puts a lot of people in this room and if we look at searching patterns instead of birthdays, chances are you will find a few people who search the same way you do. Especially when they are newbies.

Newbies do not use correct terminology. They are still learning. They don't know the lingo yet. So while you are writing your next great post on "Social Media Optimization", you are going to get a lot of hits from people who know hat you are talking about, but chances are, you aren't going to be bringing a lot of newbies into the fold. They might be looking for "how to market your product on MySpace" and totally miss your post. Instead of finding your post on "The Newest Banner Rotator Plugin for Wordpress", they may be looking for "how to have banners like John Chow".

I picked a random date in my search history. It goes back for two years. On Dec 28, 2006, I was searching for "convert links into html", followed by "add href to link list", followed by "create clickable links out of url list". I actually remember doing it. I was adding my lists to this blog and was pretty new to dealing with Wordpress. I was looking for the Autolink uri plugin. Did I know to search for that exact term? Of course not. Did I find it eventually? Yes.

Any long chain of similar phrases in your Google Web History may be a good subject for a post. If it took you that long to find it, make it easier for the next guy who is new, searching just like you did, and is getting frustrated right at this moment. It is a huge mistake to think that the rest of the world is just as knowledgeable on a subject as you are now. Pick any subject, any topic and there are thousands of people out there that are looking for just the right post to tell them how to get started, what to do after they get started and so on. People in every level from "I heard about" to expert are searching right now for things that have not been written yet.

Take a lesson from Hemingway. Simplify. Just because you know the jargon doesn't mean you have to use it throughout the article. Thrown in those phrases from your newbie days. Your regular readers may laugh, but you will be gaining new ones who think you are brilliant, yet easy to understand.

This is why products like Atomic Blogging sell.