Hope you know everything you say here is on google

Guess I better stop making threats and crude jokes

You can find literally everything and anything on google!

It's because of their site search engine... it's google based... goggle promotes this for this specific reason. Their search algorithms basically revolve around "relevance". So this combined with the search being initiated in the healing well forum website means it's going to pick out these posts first

So when you type in Colitis Old Mike their algorithms go to work and search for what site or web page is most relevant to the specific search terms or "question being asked" so to speak- In this case Colitis Old Mike is most often associate with this forum. And the specific key words and length of time posting become relevant as well.

Same concept is applied to marketing through google... the more relevant your business or web page is to a particular search term the higher it is going to appear in google search results.

In fact it keeps track of how many people search the term, click on your site, how many pages they visit, how much time they spent etc... and if people are searching a term and picking your site, but then clicking the back button or exiting within a few seconds, your web site will appear lower and lower in the search results over time because it means it's not relevant to what they are looking for. Sort of filters out the spam sites etc as well this way... by keeping track.

Post Edited (Canada Mark) : 8/28/2013 7:21:17 PM (GMT-6)

Found this site through google actually. I would google confusing symptoms or things about UC, and healingwell would always pop up. So I am kind of grateful for it :)

yeah I found hw through a search too.

don't worry you are anonymous here unless you choose to make yourself known: give out a real name as a screenname, in a post, signature, or provide a link to another web service that does. i've seen a few cases here where somebody links to photobucket, instagram, a blog, or somethink like that and on that website a name is given. if you are sharing a link to such services in a post on hw, just know it is easy for anyone to go back to the main page of instagram and see all of your other photos. certainly, giving out your general location may make it easier to pin someone down too.

I believe in some anonymousness on the internet for those who are responsible

I've noticed any time I'm researching IBD related information Healing Well threads are likely near the top.

That is why HealingWell is a prime target for egomaniacs who try to hijack the forum, and instead of sharing information, try to overwhelm other points of view.

What?? Fruitgirl is not your real name?? I am disappointed to hear that... ;)

I'm aware of this. This is how I find my pasts threads.

That's also how we get spammers, spam bots, trolls etc who incorporate all the latest buzzwords from recent posts.

q

Old Mike said...
I belong to another forum,and nothing gets out to google.
So how do they do it.
Old Mike

That other site probably has a No-Index tag in header/meta tags, that will tell Google and the other Search Engines that site doesn't want to crawled or in their search engines, so that other forum will not show up in Google or other search engines.

HealingWell probably makes way tooooo much money every day on their advertising that they'd never even consider not participating in search engines that drive more traffic to their sites.

I'd recommend not putting "old mike" in the title of a thread, that might keep your name out of the search engines somewhat. Other than that there probably isn't much you can do about it except not post anymore....which seems counter-productive.

Post Edited (ks1905) : 8/29/2013 6:22:41 PM (GMT-6)

Many moons ago, this is how I found HW too...thru Google. But at the time HW didn't have nearly as many members or forums.

Personally I don't care if my health conditions are plastered all over the Internet. I'm honest about what I have to everyone I know. It is what it is.

The thing I don't share is my last name. It's not a common last name and if I shared it...well I don't want anyone finding me.

But as long as you are anonymous here and don't reveal personal info, then you are safe. Us mods try to protect our members by discouraging the sharing of last names and email addys.