AC Jones’ Neighborhood

I've read so many series books I think I have half of the formula.

The story takes place in a pastoral and picturesque small town along a large body of water, near the mountains, or along a railway line, or all three... usually along the rural Eastern Seaboard.  OR The story takes place at a boarding school.

There is a group of very nice girls.  There is another group of girls, who aren't very nice at all.  These two groups are always at odds with each other, and there is always one especially difficult girl but the nice girls always win out and usually manage to convert one or more of the mean girls to the "better way" in the process.  If the story takes place at boarding school, there is always one old bitter hag of a teacher that will play prominently in the story.

There is a group of boys, made up of the brothers of the nice girls and some of the other nice boys from town.  There is always one joke of a boy that no one likes but is always included in the activities to serve as comic relief and the boys are always playing tricks on him or teasing him mercilessly.  The dolt always redeems himself to the group in some way by showing he's a pretty good guy when he's not being such a lame duck.

These girls and boys are always very civic minded and usually stage some kind of charity event that is threatened in some way, but always comes off well and produces whatever end was desired.

The parents are always minor characters, but 9 times out 10 they appear as kind, loving, patient and understanding friends and confidants.

There is always one adult that the kids love and admire and is their trusty "Go To Guy (Girl)".  This person usually acts as chaperone for the group on their outings, although they are so pure of heart they never need one, but something always happens and the chaperone saves the day by imparting their wisdom of experience to the group.

The group always goes on an exciting trip or has a local adventure where either something mysterious needs to be solved or a conflict that needs to be resolved, or while on the adventure they meet up with either a young waif or an older person who needs to be taken under the collective wing of the group and offered some kind of help or rescuing.

How'd I do, did I get it pretty close?

QUESTION:  Is there any place on my computer I can look to see what "2" version of Firefox was running before the update to version "3"?

It makes me ANGRY every time I try to go online.  ANGRY ANGRY ANGRY.

First, and most annoyingly, it has changed the way Vox is displayed to me, as well as several other web sites.

I hate what's happened to the bookmarks menu.  I can no longer just click bookmarks from the menu.  I have to click command D TWICE AT LEAST for some hideous black and see-through box to open in some random spot on the page.  Then it won't allow me to select a folder, it just drops it into the uncategorized bookmarks folder.  Then I try to organize the bookmarks and get brutally rebuffed there too.

And I can't stand the round edged address/search bars.  Could it look anymore like Internet Explorer?  If I wanted to work on pc I'd buy a pc.  Stop shitting on my Mac.

And what happened to the tabs?  Why do they take up 1/4 of the toolbar height?  and I don't need some stupid "+" button to open a new tab.

I also despise the changes to the back/forward, stop and reload buttons on the tool bar. 

I hate everything about Firefox 3.  I hate it so much I've gone back to using SAFARI!  It's that awful...

It started off as an annoyance and has grown into a full-blown aggravation. Many car dealer website and automotive marketing vendors are using the "site:" command in Google search as a demonstration of their SEO power.

This, my friends, is the wool being pulled over people's eyes, just like a misdirection-based magic trick.

What is "Site:"?

Simply stated, typing site:yourdomain.com into a Google search will show you how many pages Google has indexed. Having many pages indexed is a good thing (under most circumstances if the pages have unique content, but that's another article), but it is low on the list of factors required to have strong SEO.

The argument that "more indexed pages = better SEO solution" is simply false. It's like saying that Kia is a superior car to Bentley because more are on the road. There's nothing wrong with a Kia, but it's not a Bentley.

It's the SEO of each individual page that makes the difference in the long run.

With that said, having more high-quality, unique-content-rich pages indexed on your site IS a good thing. In fact, it's a great thing, which is why we promote products such as Pages on the Fly, Dealer TV, and Power Indexed Inventory. These services allow both us and the dealer to create and index dozens, even hundreds of pages with unique content to help them rank well. Our homepages are strong and rank well for the "money terms" that are high volume and highly relevant, but it's in these additional content pages options that TK Carsites dealers can excel.

Why "Site:" is Important, and Why it Isn't

It's a best practice in automotive SEO to have a good amount of indexed pages. This is true in most forms of SEO. For that reason, it's important.

The problem with counting indexed pages as a sign of SEO is that in the world of car dealer websites, it can be "faked". Simply having hundreds or thousands of indexed pages is a meaningless feat if the pages themselves are not content-rich. Having inventory pages that are indexed without unique content on them is not only ineffective, it can actually HURT your overall SEO.

Here's what happens: an inventory page is indexed by Google. The search engine reads the page and may or may not rank that page for the term "(year) (make) (model) (metro)". Two weeks later, the vehicle is sold. It's removed from inventory and that page becomes a "dead link". Most website providers turn this page into what is called a "custom 404". It's an error page that redirects to the homepage.

When Google comes back and re-indexes that page, it's gone. Google took your page, presented it to its "customers" (searchers), and gets burned by your website. It was presenting something to people that is no longer there and that has been replaced by a 404 error (even though it is redirecting to the homepage).

This is bad.

Soon, we will discuss how Power Indexed Inventory by TK Carsites handles this issue, but that's not for this post. For now, suffice to say that having quality indexed pages is a good thing. Having a lot of duplicate content, non-permanent pages indexed is not.

What Should You Look For?

If "site:" is not the answer, how can you tell whether a website's SEO is strong or not? The answer is simple. Search. There are certain keywords you should use to "test" a site's SEO strengths and the prowess of their provider.

• (City) (Make) - Minneapolis Toyota
• (City) (Make) Dealers - Shreveport Honda Dealers
• (Make) (City) - Acura Washington DC
• (Make) Dealers (City) - GMC Dealers Rochester
• (Make) (Model) (City) - Ford Focus Richmond
• (City) (Make) (Model) - Boston Nissan Altima

Those are targeted, strong-volume keywords. Another way to test is to pick a make, then add "dealers" to the end.  Check through a handful of pages and take note of which automotive website providers have representation there. You would probably assume that the largest vendors would have the most websites in the first 3 pages.

Then again, you may be surprised.

* * *

The biggest problem today in automotive digital marketing is that most dealers aren't completely versed in proper SEO today. The search engines are in a constant state of flux. When you read reports or check data, be mindful of the dates. Some things never change (linking is important and always will be, content is important and always will be) but be aware that if it worked last year, it might not be working the same now.  Research. Ask. Learn.

Choose wisely.

"Below we give the black list of States, showing the limit at which fathers, brothers, and husbands have placed the age at which a little girl may consent to her ruin."

People standing on their horses, WTF!?

Part I:  Trains and childhood memories…

Trains ran through the towns all around where I grew up.

I remember being in the car going to town or where-not and hearing “hurry up or we’ll miss the train” – meaning if we don’t hurry we will have to sit at the railroad crossing and wait for the train to pass until the gate is raised again.  I never minded, I was never in a hurry and I fondly remember counting the train cars while waiting for the caboose to pass.  Some of the past-times I had as a kid were putting pennies on the tracks to get flattened and in later years walking on the disused tracks with my friends and trying not to fall off the line.

All over the area you will still find abandoned Railway Stations.  One of our most famous, the Dansbury Depot, just burnt down, so sad.  It had been renovated into a very popular restaurant and railway museum and I had many a fine meal there.  I also hear that the Tobyhanna Station has been renovated and trains once again run through the Poconos, but I don't know if that's true or not...

I have never forgotten that there was this one gatehouse that I wanted to renovate and live in – I was 4 years old and thought that was the neatest building I had ever seen.  It’s down the line the tiniest bit from the Tobyhanna Railway Station and I can’t believe I found photos!  See the lipped arch over the doorway on the right in the second photo?  My Uncle used to hoist me up there to sit…. Super great memory!  And still to this day I’d like to renovate and live in it.

I can’t remember when the trains stopped running through my town, but I remember when they still did.

Part II: Phoebe Snow:  Famous Railway Icon, not the Singer…

The other day I saw a toy advertisement from 1909, and a game called “Phoebe Snow” was listed and since I had zero idea what that could be I looked it up…

Well.  The game took a little looking for to find, but I did easily find some interesting information.  Turns out Phoebe Snow was a very popular “local girl” to where I grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania and I’d never heard of her even though I knew of my area’s rich Railroad history!

Phoebe Snow was an early 1900s invention of the advertising department of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad Line and she had her image painted on rail car and on posters in rail stations where you could purchase a Phoebe Snow postcard, and actresses would even ride the rails portraying her.

She was so popular that a game depicting a trip from New York to San Francisco was made (probably heartily endorsed by the Rail companies) and probably under many a tree on Christmas Morning 100 years ago!

I wondered what other advertising gimmicks had her name on them, so I searched both the web and images on google for Phoebe Snow Railroad and found some good pictures and reading.  I encourage you to do the same… Start here:

I especially enjoyed this "first person" excerpt from womeninrailroading.com and this blog post with a large array of photos, including one not shown here of the Phoebe Snow game.  Then there's always the wikipedia page.  And a book on google books called “Railroads of Pennsylvania: fragments of the past in the Keystone landscape” by Lorett Treese that mentioned in detail the Railway history of the Pocono Mountains.

Part III:  The Toy ad.

This best-ever toy ad is for the adult with an imagination as there are no pictures.  It’s a wonderful list of what was in the turn of the century child’s nursery.  I could see every one of these toys in mind as they might have been as they were unwrapped on Christmas morning 1909.

I am so curious what the “magnetic toys’ might have been and how they must have seemed so fascinatingly forward for the time.  I could see the Indian Suit with its feathers and fringe – I wondered if it was a teepee or a tent?  I could imagine all of the gorgeous dolls with all of their finery and falderal. (like that word, falderal?  It’s a good old-fashioned one.)

I could guess what all of the Games and blocks were about as I was looking through the list:  I’ve always loved Paper Dolls, and I could understand the New North Pole game as the North Pole had been big news in the Spring of 1909 and this list is from December 1909.  The Post Office game, I could imagine… but I am sure not the one we played.  Anyway, I was all wrapped up in revelry until I got to “phoebe snow”… I took pause and thought to myself I wonder what kind of game that is!?

… and that’s the spark that started this post about trains.

EDIT: I meant to add this video yesterday and I don't know why all of the videos from the internet archive get cut off on the right side when I embed them on vox.  But you can always visit the internet archive to see full screen: MORNING FREIGHT.

What are you hoping to find under the tree this year?

A new car.

Oldsmobile 1921

I live in San Rafael, California.

This is my town 100 years ago.

No, it's not a dinner of horse-meat.

It's the Washington Animal Rescue League's Christmas Dinner FOR horses...