Troy

I'm saying that they were sexaually abused and raped.

Here is summary of resources some posted to those interested in SEO: Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184 Webmaster Guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769 High-quality sites: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html And this handy checklist for underperforming sites: Check your site's search performance: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34444 While these sites can help, at the end of the day they don't explain Google's funky (not in the James Brown sense) search results. I just now reran the query that I ran on Monday for "African American Books." Today that bullshit site aabooks.com does not appear in the search results at all. I went 10 pages deep (top 100 search results) and it simply was not there! AALBC is up to page two, not great but better. Even more importantly there are now 3 Black owned sites in the top 20 BlackAmericaWeb, MahognayBooks, and AALBC. I have not seen those kinds of results in a long time. I have already noticed an increase difference in traffic, but there has not been enough time to attribute this to a change in the google algorithm. Bing https://www.bing.com/search?q=african+american+books Has AALBc.com and Mahognay book in the top 3, but they have aabooks.com listed twice in the top 20. Bing also have more Black owned site in the top 20. Because Bing includes aabooks.com (twice in the top 20) I would have to say, today July 26, 2018 Google has better "overall" results on a query of "African American Books," (even though Bing is ranking AALBC higher).

@zaji which search engine do you use? I think I'm going to start using Bing. I also need to find an alternative search solution for this website. The unfortunate thing for me is that I can't ignore Google. I have to monitor how the site perform there. Sure, I check other search engines, but since they get so little use, the impact of my ranking on those search engines don't matter very much -- at least for now. AALBC performs well on Bing, but Bing -- despite having superior search results compared to Google -- has a relatively tiny share of search compared to Google.

I also cautioned you in your use of the word "bred," as in "Blacks were bred in Slavery." Animals are bred. Humans are not "bred," the way dogs, cattle, and lab rats are. When a master rapes his slave (or gets one of his other slaves to do it), to get more slaves, that is a severe form of sexual abuse. When we use euphemisms to describe the sexual abuse of women (and men) we diminish the severity of what actually happened. This is one of the reason people have difficulty understanding the horrors of our enslavement.

Be careful here my friend. Black people perform well at sports because we work very hard at doing so -- not because we were bred for it.

Dilsa I most applaud you. Since because you used an affiliate code in your hyperlink to Amazon. The vast majority of authors don't do this. I used to point this out to each author who failed to do it, but got tired of doing it... Do you have a website, or is your Amazon page your primary web presence? Congrats on your completing your three book series!

Yeah I should make my life easier and just drink the Kool-Aid and swallow the blue pill.

I know. It seems that no amount of internet bullying can compare to real life bullying.... The pull of social media is strong. The only way I can avoid it on my phone is to not install the apps. I was experimenting with Instagram recently but eventually deleted the apps I can't do it. As a contributor there is a level of narcissism required that I can't muster on a regular basis. As a consumer I found myself scrolling through nonsense quickly forgetting way I picked up my phone in the first place. Of course this is by design and even those aware of what is being done can fall prey. So while committing suicide as a result of internet bullying can seems extreme (and it is), the psychology behind it probably escapes us because were not reared on social media. The brains of kids are wired differently.

I appreciate the support @Delano but there is very little member can do -- other than visit the site or turn other on to it. Which will always be appreciated (I of course hope you and anyone else who visits this site gets something in return) Google does not reward high traffic sites they create them. It is a subtle and important distinction. Despite all the deficiencies with Wikipedia, Google has anointed wikipedia as the go to iste for all information. The of course bolsters Wikipedia's traffic which in turn gives them the resources to continue to grow and improve. This comes at the expense of other superior sites on any given subject who wither away and die because they are undiscoverable. This I argue is one of Google's biggest crimes against the net -- despite all their flowery rhetoric to the opposite. I know my position on Google is not universally held, but that is because most people don't (or can't) see the WWW from my perspective. My position also runs counter to some other techies, but these people have brought into the idea that Google is great and can do no wrong. I agree Google is great, but they are a monopoly who have recklessly over reached in the unchecked pursuit of as much money as possible.

@Chevdove, I would stop well short of saying the Museum is "awesome." There really is not much to see in it.

@Pioneer1 We might not agree with Colin's tactics or lack of a strategy, but clearly we agree with the spirit of what he was trying to accomplish and we should support him. But again we won't because collectively (save the ministers in the video), we refuse to stand up for ourselves. The boycott now would be to punish the NFL, in a way they understand, financially, for firing Colin. @Chevdove, it probably is too early for us to boycott the NFL. We are simply not ready.

I posted on the google webmaster central help forum with this issue: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/QYFZLPIctE0;context-place=forum/webmasters I really went there to vent not because someone from Google would give me answer (they won't), but because I knew there would be people who could understood and relate to the Google issues I'm always complaining about. I got some interesting feedback a couple of really good suggestions and couple of condescending one too -- but t was all good. Probably a bit too wonky a conversation to interest most of you, but worth checking out if you are running a website for "fun and money."

Club participant Doriel Larrier introduces our club's first selection in 8 years: September 2018 – Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston HarperCollins (May 08, 2018)

Del startpage.com uses Google's search results. This simply emphasizes my point about Google dominance.

OK I had a good night sleep... It is not just my imagination regarding Google search results. Here are the results of the same queries on other search engines. If you click the search engines graphic it will run a query of African American books. While Google has the largest site dedicated to Black books on the 3rd page of it's search results Duck Duck Go has AALBC #4 and Bing has AALBC #2. There are other search engines like Yahoo and AOL, but they both use Bing's results. Still, relatively speaking very few people use these search engines. Because Google embeds their search engine in the Android operating system, Google commands and astounding 97%+ share of mobile search. If you added Bing and DDG's share of desktop search and multiplied it by 10 it would not top Google's share. I'm going to stop using Google as my default search engine. Bing offers reward points for using it. Duck Duck Go does not bombard you with advertising, insert their products in front of search results, plus they maintain your privacy. @Delano you'll be happy to read I will substitue the searchings below for Google's search engine. Now I just need to find a viable alternative for search on my website. A lutu continua

I'm not sure I understand your question Del. The biggest source of traffic to AALBC from search engines; the vast majority of this organic search traffic from Google's search engine. It does not matter which search engine people use all of them are capable of driving traffic to AALBC. Visitors can use Duck Duck Go or Bing, but the reality is that the vast majority of people use Google.

You can buy likes and shares and and thing else you need on Facebook. My understanding is that this are done by a combination of bots and humans. In facts many of the likes we get on social media are done by bots, so that when likes are are done for payment it is harder to detect. Regarding 45, perhaps.

Yes I know many webmasters have plenty of gripes about Google's search results -- all of whom feel their site's should ranks #1 in search results. Back in the spring of this year I noticed AALBC, which always performed very well on these search terms; "African American Books" and "African American Literature" (without the quotes) started to creep down the search engine ranking and is now getting clobbered on these terms. On a test I ran, just now, using incognito mode on Chrome browser, AALBC was on the third page of search results for African American Books -- effectively undiscoverable for a search on that term! I have never seen AALBC this far back in the search results for this term. Relatively speaking AALBC has only improved relative to the sites that are now beating it. What makes this situation particularly irksome is that AALBC is being beaten by some pretty shitty sites: On a search of the term "African American Books" http://www.aabooks.com/ shows up on page #2. This site has not been updated in over 4 years and is a site generated from an Amazon product feed. This site is beating AALBC?! My 20+ year old site is updated daily, optimized for mobile, uses SSL a CDN and is protected behind a fire wall. I have pretty much cleared every hurdle Google has setup. If someone can explain to me how on Earth a site like aabooks.com is beating mine -- on any search term -- I'd greatly appreciate it. I have at least a dozen pages on my domain that should beat that site. I could argue against several of the other sites beating mine but aabook.com is particularly egregious example of a poor search result. I'm tired of Google's monopoly. This month Google clawed back almost $500 for ads sales they owed me -- more than 20% of my total earnings for the month. They claimed it was because of "Invalid Traffic?!" WTF! There is no recourse. I can't call anyone for an explanation. I just have to take it. This is because Google also has a monopoly in online ad sales. Google's power is so great they can actually sell ad on my website than I can sell them! The worst part of it all is that Google can put AALBC -- any site -- out of business in 5 minutes and there ain't shit you or I can do about it. Google can read this post and say, "Put the little nigger out of business now!" and actually make it happen. I'm swearing because I'm pissed off and tired. Goodnight!

Someone forwarded this to me today on Facebook with the instructions to "forward this every Black person you know." I have to admit I was a little excited because i thought now, finally, some Black leaders are getting together to take substantive action against the NFL since Colin Kaepernick has been neutralized. I dug a bit deeper into this effort and see that he video was created LAST YEAR! My hopes were dashed because obviously this effort had less than zero impact. Why didn't this effort go viral on the Web? The video has been posted several times on youtube. The one with the most views (that I could find) is shared below. It got less than 83K views. This is a video created by a bunch of ministers with presumably supportive congregations why am I just now learning about this?!. They even have a hashtag #blackout. The answer is obvious we don't control social media. We also do not own any platforms with meaningful reach that would promote this effort and that we also support. As a result after NFL "killed" Kaepernick their revenues are higher than ever... But the most important reason for the failure of this effort is that we, as a people, are too WEAK to boycott the NFL. We won't boycott social media we won't boycott Amazon, we are pathetically support those who have demonstrated, time and time again, that they dont give s hit about us. We deserve everything we get. It is not too late for the 2018/19 season.

@Delano Perhaps, but they have no souls, but Twitter just did a massive clean up so I presume a majority of them are real. Even if it were half and only half of these supported what 45 tweets that is still a hell of a lot more people. The Wall Street Journal reports that 45's approval rating is current at 45%. 45% -- and those are all real people! Obama had an approval rating as low as 38%. Surely you understand 45 has a tremendous amount of support -- despite what you or I think. That support matters.

@Delano I believe your typos are better than mine. Seriously though, I believe you are using a handheld device which makes it a little harder. I almost always post from a laptop, so I really have no excuse...

I have never visited 45's Twitter page before 2 minutes ago. There was not need to mainstream and social media shovel 45's tweets as if the were in a race to be the first to share his BS. 7 minutes ago 45 tweeted the following: I was on the New York Times website, while reading a completely unrelated article about the Supreme Court's decision which changes the rules of the collection of sales tax by online retailers. Inside the article the Times included a tweet by Trump applauding the decision (which tells me this must be a bad decision for business like mine). This is what prompted me to visit 45's page 45 has over 53 million followers (there are only 68 million active users in the US). 18 people I know also follow 45. I'm seriously considering unfollowing those people 45 only follows 47 people. Other than VP Mike Pence and his family most of the others are right wing talking heads, not journalists, but talk show hosts like Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. This makes for the perfect filter bubble -- every tweet gets global attention, the large number of followers reinforce his popularity and the fact people want to read what he writes, and the people he follow are popular sycophants. The man has tweeted over 38 thousands times that is ALOT of tweets! I've tweeted 17 thousand tie, but the vast majority of those tweets were generated by bots. Let be go unfollow those 18 people....

Very true. The analogy between online discussion forums and our culture is both valid and depressing. Yes, the sun will continue to come up at least a few billion more years. Humanity will not be around to witness these as our presence on this planet will last a relative blink of an eye.

LOL where did you find this photo @Cynique? Actually this brings to mind another problem. It would be very easy for a hackers to create a fake video of me jacking off. Again, I would not pay a ransom to prevent for that from being distributed, but one could very easily be created. I've previous shared a couple of memes trolls created to make fun of me (after a quick search I can't find them now). I thought they were funny and, truth be told, being a target does reflects a degree of success.