Fakhreddine

Image via Wikipedia

I flew to Jordan this week to speak and also gave a workshop on digital communications at the MediaME Digital Summit. In my humble opinion, MediaME - together with ArabNet and Click - is one of the region's critical digital events and this year's conference featured some great speakers (present company etc etc) and much thought-provoking opinion and debate.

It was slightly odd to be back in Jordan after having hit the 'go' button on the Middle East print edition of Olives (A Violent Romance) - somehow the book has become solid, concrete now. The King's Highway (the road from the airport to Amman, but also the Kingdom's core arterial route from Amman to Aqaba) is being rebuilt and is apparently to become a privatised toll route. The new airport will be ready by summer next year. And Amman nightclub Nai has been refurbished and rebranded. Just as well, after the incidents recounted in Olives! Did I mention you can now buy Olives as a printed book at amazon.com, BTW? I did? Ah, okay then...

During the workshop at MediaME, I used this silly wee blog as an example of SEO, pointing out how mad it was that I 'owned' Amman's delightful Fakhreddine restaurant on Google. If you Google 'Fakhreddine Amman' you don't get the restaurant itself (as you rightly should - it's a must visit if you're staying in Amman and want to eat some of the best Arab food the Levant can dish up), but you do get me.

This is not a good thing. It's a compelling reason for the restaurant to invest some money in SEO and grabbing back its ownership of its brand.

I got a comment from the audience - "Actually, we're their agency and if you Google just 'Fakhreddine' you get our client!

No you don't. You get Fakhr Al Din, various Fakhreddines, the restaurant in Broumana (Lebanon) and me. You don't get Amman's famous Lebanese/Arabic/Levantine (delete as your preference dictates) restaurant Fakhreddine. If you Google 'Fakhreddine restaurant' you get Fakhreddine Broumana, London and me in that order. You don't get Fakhreddine Amman. And that's mad, because the place is famous and generally celebrated for its excellence.

I wish I'd stopped the workshop to look it up then and there. If Amman's Fakhreddine had a website (if it does, I can't find it), I'd do a post specifically to right the wrong and redirect hungry Googlers to the right place, because I really do appreciate and support this most excellent of restaurants and wish it nothing but the very best.

But it does, like so many Middle Eastern businesses, need to get smarter about its online presence and search parameters.

How did you get here?

Image by tricky ™ via Flickr
I'm not asking any deep philosophical question or setting out to give you a Paulo Coelho answer to the riddles and mysteries of life. I was just wondering how you actually, you know, got here.

SiteMeter, which is a handy little doodad that does all sorts of analysis on visitors to one's blog, shows a remarkable diversity of paths that lead to this silly little blog. Quite a few people come via the UAE Community Blog, appearing to use that Venerable UberBlog as a 'jumpsite'. Another good dash of visitors wander in from Twitter for one reason or another - some impelled, no doubt, by the odd pimping tweet broadcast by yours truly.

A good number come via search and all sorts of strange searches lead people, presumably often bitterly disappointed to find that what you see is most certainly not what you get, here. I am particularly proud that all sorts of permutations of Subway, Aquafina, Pringles and Kelloggs are leading people to the posts on this blog that explore the egregious side of all four. That people searching Google for "subway fake wheat bread" get this post on their first page of search results is a delight to me. I see quite a few people, one way and another, who are looking for various sorts of fakery. A rod for my own back, that one!

Some appear to repeat searches they've made before - at least I can only hope this is the case with the recurring incidence of 'Russian Girl Face Slash' I get landing here. I'm also very glad I regularly disappoint the people searching for various permutations centred around Russian girls and nocturnal activities. I occasionally post some of the stranger searches I get, such as this here post.

Some people seem to stumble by. Some use their RSS readers, although by no means as many as I'd have thought. A few people wander in from other blogs who have either linked to one of my intemperate rants or kindly put me on a blogroll.  Quite a lot come up as 'unknown', so I don't know where they came from.

So here's my question today. Where did you come from? Drop a quickie comment if you wouldn't mind.

Oh - and thanks. It's nice to see you!