This should not bother me. Yet it does.
Not too long ago, I sat in on a conference call with a web development/design firm who was tasked with redesigning about 20 new websites for us. As the organization’s website manager, it’s my job to follow the progress, ask pertinent questions and address any concerns they may have.
Without getting into some of the boring details of the call and the back-and-forth geeky, technical, exchanges – one of the questions I asked pertained to how long it takes Google to find pages of a website and index them in their search results.
As someone who has been doing this sort of work for 17 years now, I know that answer.
Those on the other end of the phone – a couple of IT project managers and a network administrator – said that it takes Google 6-weeks to crawl a website and index pages. My eyes narrowed, I slowly began shaking my head and argued that it does not.
Yet when you’ve got a professional development firm – a firm being paid a substantial amount of money with a lineup of highly talented and experienced web designers and developers – saying one thing and a single-employee who essentially acting as a liaison saying another, who gets believed? Who comes out as the more authoritative voice? Who wins the discussion?
I can tell you this: it wasn’t me.
My credibility took a hit that day and there’s little doubt that those on both sides of that call questioned my knowledge. Truth be told, I even began doubting myself.
Fortunately, as I like to say, “Google knows all.” Especially if it’s a Google-related question.
So I fired up the ol’ laptop, opened a browser, went to Google and asked: How long does it take for a page to be indexed by Google and the answer was immediate:
It takes between 4 days and 4 weeks for your brand new website to be crawled and indexed by Google. This range, however, is fairly broad and has been challenged by those who claim to have indexed sites in less than 4 days. — Jul 20, 2016
Four days to 4-weeks. Not 6-weeks.
And, just to appease myself, I looked at the last two blog-posts (at the time) on atthespeedofmatt.com. The ‘A-Ha’ Moment took about 4-weeks to be indexed by Google. Motivation and a 9-year old took 19 days.
For giggles, I immediately wrote up a new blog-post titled The Prank Call and saw today – just 8-days later – Google had found and indexed it.
I should feel happy. I should feel vindicated. But I don’t. I feel angry.
The so-called damage is done and I know that I’d come off looking like a complete douche-canoe if I went around saying “Yeah? Well. I told you so!”
The professional, mature, thing to do is suck-it up and be quiet.
If your education, experience, training, background, gut-feelings and intuition tell you something, it’s probably right. Trust in yourself and show confidence. Even if others may not always recipropcate.