Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Google loves tomspine.com

I don't know what it is about it, but Google just loves tomspine.com in its search results. Maybe it is because my site has been up for a long time. I just checked the Wayback Machine and found that I must have set up my domain late in 2003, although I know I first set up a site several years before that via my cable provider. In any event, I'm constantly amazed at how often my site shows up in search results.

Today was a case in point. I received a mail message out of the blue from a guy named Jonathan in Hudson, NH. Jonathan is a patient of Dr. Wingate at Nashua Eye Associates and he is considering LASIK eye surgery.

Like any sane person, Jonathan was doing some research on the surgery and the doctor. He found my write up of having Dr. Wingate perform LASIK surgery on me in 2000, updated with follow ups in 2001 and 2004. Jonathan wondered how things have gone since then.

I was thrilled to be contacted, and told Jonathan that yes, I'm still very happy with my LASIK surgery. While I do now wear reading glasses (ahem, no cracks about middle age), I continue to have excellent vision and no negative side effects.

But I wondered just how Jonathan found my web site. I thought, hmmm, maybe he did a Google search on "Dr. Wingate lasik", so I tried that. Holy cr*p, the order of the search results blew me away. First result is, of course, a sponsored link for some LASIK vision center. But then the first "real" search result is my web site! I come up before Dr. Wingate's bio, before a Nashua Telegraph article, even before the Nashua Eye Associates web site! That astounds me.

But I love it. :-)

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