Advanced technical approach to finding really cool stuff
You might have read about “Similar pages across the internet” or “The forest for the trees” or “How to search and find whatever is most important to you.” Basically, pages on the internet which have the most similar words to one another, have cool things in common.
I just applied that process to my “About” page, and got some beautiful results.
I searched Google for the words on my About page. The first match is an interview with Colleen Barrett of Southwest Airlines. You can see why the page matches by viewing the cached version, with similar keywords highlighted. Oh, and I really really like so much of what she says.
The second match mentions JourneyPage in its first paragraph, which is neat because Michael and Sheena of JourneyPage are friends whom I’ve written about on this blog before. But it’s not anywhere near as relevant — usually the first match is far and away the most relevant, because of the Power Law — Zipf’s Law related to Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort.
The other way of searching combines synonyms from my About page.
The first page in this match is a “Guide to Working in Teams.” You can see why it’s a match by viewing the cached version with highlighted keywords.
I was also touched to read a story by Madelyn Blair, whom I’ve spoken with through the excellent Golden Fleece storytelling conference.
It was the fourth-closest match using the combined synonym search. And using a simple algorithm: “find the paragraphs with the greatest number of unique matching keywords and closest to the top of the page!” we get Madelyn’s story summarized with these two paragraphs, the best matching paragraph with eight matching keywords to my About page, and the second-best match with six keywords:
“I knew creating a business would be hard, but I had experience and training, too, that would keep my dream grounded in reality. I bring the techniques and tools to help my clients achieve their dreams. I learned to work with clients in a way that allowed me to walk with them in their own story. And we created new stories together that energized them to move to new places smoothly as a natural part of their journeys.”
“I grew up on a vegetable farm in Southern New Jersey. My life was made up of being on the land and visits to my grandparents. On a farm, life is very busy, and my parents had little time for us as children except to make certain we were cared for. But when I went to my grandparents’ house, things were different. Here the focus was on futures — where are you going Madelyn? And to help me to answer this question, they told the stories of how each of them had come to America. But it was my grandmother’s story that really spoke to me.”
The way Madelyn tells her story really speaks to me, so I hope you read it.
Similar Posts:Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
