I am still Michael Hoffman.
by Michael HoffmanMonday, May 14th, 2007
In my previous post about being this Michael Hoffman and not those other Michael Hoffmans, I forgot to mention two things.
First, that other Michael Hoffman, the anti-Semite Holocaust denier, is popular on Google partly because he has his own entry in Wikipedia. Wikipedia has become the single biggest source of top ranking links. Some commentators have questioned whether Wikipedia’s popularity in this regard is always a good thing, because the Wikipedia entry is often higher ranked in search engines than the original source (or more credible source) of the information. One thing Wikipedia doesn’t do now is help you with external links. If, for example, there is a link in that Michael Hoffman’s entry for his book, it won’t help his book’s search engine rankings because Wikipedia has instituted something called “do not follow” for external links. The purpose of this is to stop people from seeding Wikipedia entries with links for the purpose of raising their search engine popularity.
The second thing I forgot to mention was a story that illustrates how many Michael Hoffmans there really are. Last year I was standing in the security line at BWI airport and in front of me stood a man of about my age looking like he just came from a trade show. He had a badge on, and upon closer inspection, I noticed that the badge said “Michael Hoffman.”
He was on the phone and I waited until he was done and as he was just about to dial another number I handed him my business card. He looked confused until he looked at my name. “No Way!” he said. Way.
What are the chances of having two Michael Hoffmans in the same airport at the same time? What are the chances of being in the security line at the same time? What are the chances of being right next to each other in the security line? Wow. Turns out that Michael Hoffman is in the organic food business up in New England somewhere. So while I don’t expect that to happen again, I do bump into Michael Hoffmans all the time, only virtually.
