What began as a routine attempt to see whether Google had indexed one of his travel articles reportedly deteriorated Sunday into an intense, one-sided rivalry between local website owner Joseph Zimmerman and internationally known travel personality Rick Steves.
“I want to be perfectly clear: I had absolutely nothing against Rick Steves when this started,” said Zimmerman, who operates ShouldIBuyThisCrap.com, a website featuring product reviews, travel guides, satire, and other material Google has apparently decided to keep private between him and his immediate family.
Zimmerman said the trouble began when he searched Google for keywords related to articles he had written.
He expected to find his website somewhere in the results.
He did not.
What he found was Rick Steves.
“So I thought, okay, obviously I’m not going to be on the first page,” Zimmerman said. “The site is still growing. That’s fair.”
He clicked page two.
Rick Steves.
Page three.
Rick Steves.
Page seven.
Rick Steves.
“By page 12, I wasn’t even looking for my website anymore,” Zimmerman said. “I was looking for Rick.”
At approximately page 19, Zimmerman reportedly leaned toward the monitor and whispered, “There you are, you son of a bitch.”
Steves, who as far as anyone knows has never heard of Zimmerman, was unavailable for comment and is believed to be peacefully going about his life completely unaware that he is involved in a blood feud.
Google Recommends Zimmerman Simply Become More Important
According to Zimmerman, he has spent countless hours performing the series of ancient digital rituals collectively known as Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.
These rituals include writing meta descriptions, researching keywords, building internal links, organizing categories, optimizing page titles, submitting sitemaps, checking indexing, monitoring crawling, improving site structure, and staring at Google Search Console until it begins to feel like a diagnostic tool being used on him.
Each improvement has reportedly produced encouraging results.
Just not results involving visitors.
“I’ve learned a tremendous amount about SEO,” Zimmerman said. “For example, I’ve learned that Google knows my website exists.”
“That was a huge milestone.”
Asked whether Google was willing to show the website to anybody else, Zimmerman stared silently out a window for several minutes.
“No.”
Other Joseph Zimmermans Also Asked To Kindly Fuck Off
Rick Steves is not Zimmerman’s only problem.
Attempts to search his own name have revealed that numerous other people named Joe or Joseph Zimmerman have apparently spent their lives maliciously building careers, establishing online presences, earning credibility, and generally accomplishing things before Zimmerman got around to working on his website.
“I had no idea how many of these bastards there were,” Zimmerman said.
“They’re everywhere.”
According to sources, Zimmerman initially believed that having the name Joseph Zimmerman would give him a reasonable chance of appearing in search results for Joseph Zimmerman.
Google disagreed.
Instead, the search engine reportedly presented him with various other Zimmermans whom its algorithm has determined are considerably more Joseph Zimmerman than he is, even a Larry Zimmerman.
“I’m sitting there thinking, who the fuck is Larry Zimmerman?” Zimmerman said.
“I don’t even outrank a fucking Larry.”
Website Successfully Monetized With Zero Money
Zimmerman’s difficulties have extended beyond search results.
Having constructed a functioning website, published original material, organized the site, worked on crawlability, and repeatedly attempted to satisfy the mysterious requirements of online advertising systems, he turned his attention toward monetization.
The process has reportedly been extremely successful except for the monetization part.
Google AdSense has become another recurring character in the ordeal, occasionally presenting Zimmerman with information that can roughly be translated as:
Something is wrong.
When asked what was wrong, the system clarified:
One of the things.
Zimmerman has consequently spent considerable time working on advertising configuration, ads.txt, crawl access, site structure, plugins, caching, security settings, and various other systems that somehow must all function perfectly before a computer is willing to place an advertisement for toenail fungus beside one of his travel stories.
“I’ve reached the point where earning my first dollar isn’t even about the money anymore,” Zimmerman said.
“I want to frame the fucker.”
Experts Recommend Publishing High-Quality Original Content, Which He Was Unfortunately Already Doing
SEO experts have advised Zimmerman to concentrate on exactly the things he has already been concentrating on: useful original content, good site structure, relevant keywords, internal linking, firsthand experience, and patience.
The final recommendation has proven particularly irritating.
“Patience?” Zimmerman said.
“I wrote the goddamn article. I drove there. I took the pictures. I came home. I edited everything. I published it. I optimized it.”
“Rick Steves doesn’t even know we’re fighting.”
At press time, Zimmerman remained optimistic that continued publishing would eventually establish enough authority for Google to recognize ShouldIBuyThisCrap.com as a legitimate source rather than a clerical error.
He stressed that his ultimate goal is modest.
He does not need to become the largest travel website on the internet.
He does not expect to outrank enormous publications for every destination.
He would simply like someone, somewhere, to type a question into Google and receive one of his articles before reaching an age where Medicare becomes relevant.
Still, Zimmerman said the months of struggle have given him something more important than traffic.
A purpose.
A nemesis.
And a promise.
“One day somebody is going to search ‘Is Mesa Verde worth visiting?’ and I’m going to be right there on page one,” Zimmerman said.
“And Rick Steves is going to be underneath me.”
Zimmerman then paused.
“Not like that.”
“Jesus Christ. Don’t put that in the article.”
UPDATE
Google has indexed that quote.
It remains unclear why.
