#google search engine search index

[lynnemariehedvig]

TECHNOLOGIES

United States of America

[squarerankinsigniasacramento]

SIGNAL BASED TIME TRAVEL: IF YOU HAVE MILITARY COMPUTERS THAT ENABLE YOU TO TRAVEL TO A FOREIGN PLANET AND DISGUISE YOURSELF AS A MEMBER OF THE CIVILIAN POPULATION, AN ILLEGAL SPY IN TERMS OF LAWS RELATED TO WAR, YOU CAN USE THOSE COMPUTERS TO SEARCH OUR COMPUTER NETWORK, WHICH WE CALL THE INTERNET. CAN YOU SAY IT WITH ME? IN TER NET. LET ME REALLY SLOW IT DOWN BECAUSE YOU SEEM TO BE HARD OF HEARING OR FUNCTIONALLY DEFICIENT IN TERMS OF COGNITION OR COMPREHENSION

In tur net

Iiiiiiiiiiiiin teeeeeeeer neeet

[chambersevidence]

Search Engines:

Search engines are independent computer systems that read or crawl webpages, documents, information sources, and links of all types accessible on the global network of computers on the planet Earth, the internet. Search engines at their most basic level read every word in every document they know of, and record which documents each word is in so that by searching for a words or set of words you can locate the addresses that relate to documents containing those words. More advanced search engines used more advanced algorithms to sort pages or documents returned as search results in order of likely applicability to the terms searched for, in order. More advanced search engines develop into large language models, or machine learning or artificial intelligence. Machine learning or artificial intelligence or large language models (LLMs) can be run in a virtual machine or shell on a computer and allowed to access all or part of accessible data, as needs dictate.

[smute]

I GOT 100% ON MY SEX PAPER

[morgue-xiiv]

The responses to that search engine index thing are kinda worrying me becase it's such a fundamental misunderstanding of how search engine indexing works and what it's supposed to acomplish. And that's dangerous. People saying "wow if you search for my blog url then my blog comes up as a result" like.... no shit sherlock. It's a url. If someone HAS YOUR BLOG URL, Then DEFINITIONALLY they can find your blog! Tjat's literally what a URL does, and is for! That doesn't mean your blog is INDEXED. If your blog is indexed when someone searches for words or phrases you used in a blog you could potentially show up in the search results.

You might, on your blog, say "I am a vetenarian and I live in Chelmsford" (please don't do this). If someone searched "vets in chelmsford" looking for somewhere to take their sick cat, you might show up in the search results, but NOT if your blog isn't indexed (only the search engine has TRUE control over what it indexes, Tumblr cannot TRULY control this: it is not physically possible) but if you set your URL to "Chelmsford_Vet_BJH_fan" if one of your friends whose blog IS indexed ever said "yes my friend trumblruser @chelmsford_vet_bjh_fan was correct Princess Carolyn does have the most satisfying arc in the show" then suddenly you're back in the "chelmsford vet" search results and people looking fo places to take their sick cat can then type your URL into the publicly available Tumblr URL schema so they can see if you sided with Diane or Mr Peanus buffer when they broke up and then call up your employer and try to have you fired for being too much/not enough misogynistic. Google Knowing your blog EXISTS isn't the same as your blog being indexed, and if someone knows to google your UN they have access to your blog.

Also indexing is a thing search engines do periodically and if after saying you're a vet in chelmsford you think "oh fuck" and ask google not to index your blog, if google ALREADY indexed your blog, you will remain in the google results for chelmsford vets for an undetermined amount of time (could be up to 1 eternity)

[optidan]

Algorithm Updates and Their Impact on Your eCommerce Store

Algorithm updates have a profound impact on eCommerce stores, shaping how they rank in search engine results. These changes can significantly affect visibility and traffic, making SEO strategies crucial for survival and growth in the competitive online retail landscape. Search engines like Google continually update their algorithms to enhance user experience and relevance of search results. For…

[isubhamdas]

Crawl Budget Optimization-Search Engine Visibility

Crawl budget optimization boosts your site’s search engine visibility. Learn about server response times, URL structures, and sitemap management. Continue reading for practical tips and expert insights on improving your website’s crawlability. Understanding Crawl Budget and Its ImpactKey Factors Affecting Crawl BudgetServer Response TimeURL StructureInternal LinkingOptimizing Your Crawl…

[theseoblogspace]

Ready to Boost Your Site's Search Visibility?

Having a strong online presence is key for any business’s success. With millions of websites out there, how do you make sure yours gets noticed? The secret is to improve your site’s search visibility. We’ll show you the best ways to boost your website’s search engine rankings and draw in potential customers. Ever wondered how some websites always top the search engine results page (SERP)? It’s…

[ajwritesworld]

Why Isn't Your Site Showing Up on Google?

So, you have your website all set up and ready to go. But when you try looking it up on Google, it's like it doesn't even exist. You might be scratching your head wondering why you can't find your site in the search results. Well, this has a lot to do with something called search engine optimization (SEO) and various factors that affect how visible your website is online. SEO involves tweaking what is on your site and how it interacts with the rest of the internet, so it stands out more in search engine results pages (SERPs). In this blog, we're going to dive into some common reasons why websites play hide-and-seek on Google and share some smart ways to get yours seen by more people. This information is very useful for business owners, marketers, or anyone who makes websites because mastering SEO means more people visiting your site, which leads to better sales numbers or spreading the word about what you do.

Common Reasons Your Site Isn't Visible on Google

There are a few reasons why your website might not appear on Google. Figuring out and fixing these problems is crucial for making your site more visible and getting better positions in search results. Often, the trouble comes from technical SEO mistakes, not following good practices for optimizing searches, or simply because your website is pretty new. By looking into these areas closely, we can understand how they affect whether people find your site through Google search, specifically in the organic search results.

The site is not indexed by Google

One reason your site might not pop up on Google could be because it hasn't been indexed by the search engine's crawlers. Indexing is how search engines like Google collect and save info from websites so people can find them when they search. If your site isn't indexed, you won't see it in the search results. There are a few reasons this could happen, such as problems with how your website works or settings that stop these crawlers from looking at your content. To make sure people can find your website on Google searches, it's crucial to check that everything on your site is set up right and open for these search engine crawlers to visit.

Poor search engine optimization (SEO) practices

Another reason your website might not show up on Google is because it's not set up right for search engines, a process known as search engine optimization (SEO). Poor SEO practices can negatively impact your website's ranking on search engines, including Google. This can be due to factors such as not including important keywords in your content, having a difficult-to-navigate website, or not following search engine guidelines. One crucial aspect of SEO for local businesses is having a strong presence on Google through a Google Business Profile. By optimizing your website and utilizing a Google Business Profile, you can improve your local SEO and increase your chances of showing up higher in search engine results.

Website is new and not yet crawled

When you launch a new website, it might not pop up in Google search results right away. This is because search engine crawlers take some time to find and go through new sites. Crawling is how these engines get to know and list the pages of your site. After your site has been crawled, it'll begin to show up when people look things up online. It's key to remember that how long this takes can really differ from one website to another. With factors like how often you post new content, the number of good links pointing back at your site, and how well-known your domain is playing a big role in this timing. By consistently putting out fresh content, making sure your site plays nice with search engines, and working on getting high-quality backlinks, you're doing what you can to speed up this process so more folks see your website in their Google searches.

Technical Issues Hindering Site Visibility

When your website has technical problems, it might not show up well on Google search results. These problems can be things like your pages taking too long to load, not working right on phones, having links that don't work, or showing the same content in more than one place. How fast your pages load is really important because both people visiting your site and Google itself care a lot about this. If a page loads slowly, it could hurt where you stand in search rankings. With so many people using their phones to go online these days, making sure your site works well on mobile devices is key for good visibility in Google's mobile searches. Fixing these issues and making sure visitors have a smooth experience can make a big difference in how easily people find your website through Google.

SEO Best Practices for Higher Google Rankings

To get your website noticed more on Google, it's smart to stick to some SEO rules. These are tips and tricks that help make your site better for search engines. By using these rules, you can boost how high up your site shows in Google searches and attract more visitors without having to pay for ads. Important things to do include looking for the right keywords, making sure what you write is really good, tweaking the titles and little summaries of your pages (that's title tags and meta descriptions), getting other sites to link back to yours, and making sure people enjoy visiting your site. We're going into all these points one by one next so we can show you how each helps bump up where you stand in search results.

Importance of keyword research

Keyword research is super important for SEO because it helps your website show up better on Google search results. It's all about figuring out what words and phrases people are using when they're looking for stuff that has to do with what you offer, like your business or the things you sell. When you really dig into keyword research, you get a clear picture of what folks are trying to find and why. This understanding lets you make content that hits right at home with what users want to see, making it easier for your site to rank higher in search results and attract more organic traffic. However, it's also important to consider the use of search ads to further increase your website's visibility and attract potential customers. By utilizing both SEO and search ads, you can effectively reach a wider audience and drive more conversions for your business.

On-page SEO essentials

On-page SEO is all about making each page on your website better so it shows up more on search engine results. This means working on a bunch of things like having good content, using the right titles and descriptions, and linking pages within your site. To really nail this, you need to create content that's not just great to read but also full of useful info for the people you want to reach. It's important to sprinkle relevant keywords throughout your text, headings, and even in subheadings to make sure Google notices your page. By tweaking title tags and meta descriptions with these keywords too, you're likely going to see more folks clicking through from search results because what they read makes them want to learn more. Linking parts of your site together can make everything easier for visitors and give a boost in how high up your pages appear in searches by engines like Google. Putting effort into these key areas helps get more eyes on your website naturally without paying for ads.

Quality backlink profile development

To get your website noticed more on Google search results, it's really important to have a good set of backlinks. Think of backlinks as recommendations from other websites that lead people to yours. They're like a thumbs up for your site and can make a big difference in where you stand in search engine rankings. But remember, it's not about how many of these links you have; it’s the quality that counts. You want links from sites that are well-respected, relevant to what you do, and trustworthy because they help boost your site's credibility, spread the word about your brand, and bring in more visitors naturally.

Working on getting strong backlinks means doing things like writing guest posts for other blogs, creating awesome content that others want to link to without being asked, and using digital marketing strategies effectively so more folks find out about what you offer. By putting effort into developing high-quality backlinks rather than just trying to rack up as many as possible, you'll see better visibility for your site on Google searches which helps establish yourself or your company as leading voices within whatever field or industry you're part of.

Content-Related Factors Affecting Google Visibility

The stuff you put on your website really matters when it comes to how easily people can find you through Google search. There are a few things that play into this, like making sure the content is good and stands out, avoiding having the same info as everyone else in different places on your site, and making sure what you write matches up with what folks are looking for. To get more eyes on your website from Google searches, focus on crafting top-notch content that's both helpful and one-of-a-kind. If your pages have copy-pasted material or very similar information spread across them, it could hurt where you stand in search results. It's crucial to keep everything original and useful for those who visit your site. On top of all that, if you create stuff that directly answers people’s questions or fits their search needs perfectly, it'll help pull in more visitors naturally interested in what you've got to say or offer.

How to Ensure Your Site Is Indexed by Google

To make sure Google knows about your website and shows it in search results, you can do a few things. Starting off, head over to the Google Search Console and put your site on there. This tool from Google is free and helps you keep an eye on how well your website's doing in search results while giving tips to get better visibility. By using the Search Console, you're basically telling Google all about your site and what's on it. Another key move is making a sitemap—a list that tells where everything is on your site along with details like how often pages are updated or their importance level—and sending this sitemap to Google makes it easier for search engine crawlers to find and understand your website efficiently.

Submitting your site to Google via Google Search Console

To make sure your website shows up in Google search results, it's crucial to add it to the Google Search Console. This tool gives you a peek into how Google views your site and lets you keep an eye on where your site stands in terms of search rankings. To get started, prove that the website is yours by putting a special code or file from the Search Console onto your site. After verification, you'll unlock various features aimed at boosting how visible your website is when people look things up online. By keeping tabs on what's happening through the Search Console, spotting and fixing any problems becomes easier, helping improve where your site lands in organic search outcomes.

Creating and submitting a sitemap

Making and sending out a sitemap is key to making sure Google can find and show your website when people search. Think of a sitemap as a list that shows all the spots on your website, telling Google how often you update them and how important they are. When you make this list and let Google know about it, you're basically giving the search engine crawlers a map so they can easily find and understand what's on your site. This step makes your site more likely to pop up in Google search results, helping those crawlers get what your site is all about. It's an essential part of technical SEO that really helps with improving where your website stands in searches.

Improving Technical SEO for Better Indexing

To get your website noticed more on Google search results, it's really important to work on technical SEO. This means making sure all the techy parts of your site are set up right so that search engines rank it higher. Things like making your site easy to use on phones, loading pages quickly, creating a good experience for visitors, and organizing your site well are super important for improving technical aspects of SEO. Nowadays, with everyone using their smartphones to go online, having a mobile-friendly website is key. It makes visiting your site a better experience for people and helps you show up higher in search engine rankings too. Also, by speeding up how quickly pages load and fixing any tech problems, such as optimizing images and improving website structure, you can make it easier for Google to find and list your website in its search results.

Mobile optimization strategies

Making your website easy to use on phones and tablets is super important for showing up better in Google search results. Nowadays, everyone's using their mobile devices to surf the web, so you've got to make sure your site works well and looks good on all these gadgets. One way to do this is by having a responsive design for your site. This means that no matter what device someone's using, your website will automatically adjust its size and layout so it’s easy to read and navigate, enhancing user engagement. Another thing you can do is make sure any pictures or videos on your site are optimized for mobile users too; they should load fast without messing up how the page runs. Also, making it easier to get around on your site by simplifying menus and cutting down on pop-ups can really help people have a better time visiting it from their phones or tablets – which could also bump you up higher in search engine rankings! By focusing on making these changes for mobile users, not only does it become more likely that folks will find you through Google searches but also that they'll stick around because of the smooth experience.

Enhancing site speed and performance

Making your website faster and more efficient is key to getting noticed more on Google search results. When we talk about page speed, it's all about how quickly your web pages load, which is crucial for both user satisfaction and search engine rankings. If a site takes too long to load, people are likely to leave before doing anything, which isn't good for how high you rank in searches. To make things quicker and smoother on your site, you should tidy up the code behind it, make images smaller so they don't take as long to load, and cut down on HTTP requests. Using caching methods and content delivery networks (CDNs) can also help pages load faster and improve your bounce rate. By focusing on making your site speedy and efficient, you'll create a better experience for visitors; this means they're more likely to stick around and engage with what’s there leading not only to improved visibility in Google search but also to higher spots in search engine rankings.

Building a Stronger Backlink Profile

To get your website noticed more on Google search results, it's really important to work on getting a better backlink profile. Think of backlinks as recommendations from other websites that lead people to yours. Search engines see these links as thumbs-ups, showing them your site is worth checking out. By having a solid set of these endorsements, you can make your site look more authoritative, pull in more visitors without ads (that's what we mean by organic traffic), and come across as a go-to place for good info.

For improving this part of your website game plan involves several steps like writing guest posts for other blogs, crafting content so awesome that others naturally want to link back to it, and reaching out directly to sites that fit well with yours asking if they'd consider linking up. Focusing on snagging high-quality links not only boosts how visible you are when someone searches Google but also helps bring in even more folks interested in what you have to say or sell through natural means.

Strategies for acquiring high-quality backlinks

Getting good quality backlinks is key to making your website more visible on Google search results and building a strong set of links. To do this, there are a few things you can try. For starters, guest blogging is a great way. This means writing useful and interesting articles for other websites in your field. By doing so, you get to show off what you know, bring in natural backlinks, and make more people aware of your brand.

With digital marketing efforts like creating content that's worth sharing or reaching out to relevant sites asking them to link back to yours can also help big time. Don't forget about using social media platforms as well; they're perfect for getting the word out about what you've created.

By putting these methods into action—guest blogging included—you'll likely see an uptick in high-quality links pointing back at your site which not only boosts how often it pops up on Google search but also increases the number of visitors coming by naturally.

Work With Luminary Software

If you're finding it hard to get your website noticed on Google search results, Luminary Software is here for you. As a trusted digital marketing agency in Canada with a focus on SEO, we can craft effective SEO marketing strategies that will lift up your online presence. Our skilled team will take a close look at your site, pinpoint what needs work, and apply successful tactics to improve how high you rank in search engine results.

If you need help creating a custom SEO strategy for your business, call us today at (866) 665-2677 to speak with an SEO strategist.

[kaushiksarkarstore-blog]

How to set custom robot txt in your blogger setting?

As we know that most of bloggers are still using free blogger hosting and free blogspot domain for their blog website. For improving SEO of their blog to index their blog post and get postiton in the first place of first page on organic search result in Google or Bing, they need to setup custom robot txt in crawler and indexing setting. Now we are going to discuss that how can you do it - Step 1: Open your browser and visit www.blogger.com

Step 2: Log in your google account using your gmail and passsword

Step 3: See the "Main menu" on the left of blogger website. If you have multiple blog, click on dropdown option, scroll and select the blog where you want to manage the setting

Step 4: After selecting your blog, now scroll the "Main menu". You can see "Setting" option below of main menu. Click on "Setting" option.

Step 5: Now scroll the setting page to find "Crawlers and Indexing"

Step 6: In the below of Crawlers and Indexing option you can find the option "Enable custom robots.txt". Just enable this option by clicking on Slide switch

Step 7: Now click on the active option "Custom robots.txt".

Step 8: To generate custome robots.txt, you can search custom robots.txt maker in Google or Bing. Else you can directly visit this site [Link:-> https://fiResizer.blogspot.com] to generate custom robots txt.

Step 9: Open the above link in a new tab of your browser. Visit custome robots.txt maker website. Type your blog website URL/Link there and click on Generate button. Next, click on Copy button to copy generated custome robots.txt for your blog.

Step 10: Now return to previous tab where blogger setting page has open. Paste or (ctrl+v) the copied code in custome robots.txt box. Then click on save to save the code in blogger setting.

Now you can add RSS feedburner url of your blog as sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster

-> image credit to:// Image by creativeart on Freepik

[marketinggenix]

Understanding how search engines work is the first step towards a successful SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy. By comprehending the processes of crawling, indexing, and result processing, we can optimize our content to improve its visibility and relevance.

Crawling: Search engines use automated spiders to navigate the web and discover new content. These spiders crawl from page to page, collecting information.

Indexing: The collected data is organized and stored in a structured database, known as an index. This process involves analyzing content, identifying keywords, and assigning relevance scores.

Result Processing: When a user searches for information, the search engine retrieves relevant data from its index and processes it to generate search results. These results are ranked based on relevance and presented to the user.

Understanding how search engines work can help you make the most out of your online searches. From crawling the web to processing user queries, search engines play a crucial role in helping you find the information you need.

[foone]

Your posts are in an AI model

and then Tumblr decided to sell them to AI models.

Now, don't get me wrong, tumblr selling out the users to AI companies is bad, yes, they shouldn't do that. It sucks.

but don't lets get this confused: your posts were already in there. Tumblr selling them is about tumblr making some money and about the AI models having more exhaustive post collections. It's not about your posts being in an AI model, vs not being in one. That battle has already been lost.

Can you find your post on google? Then it's almost certainly in an AI model already. Think about it: These AI sites showed up before all the sites were making deals to sell their users' content, right? How do you think they built them in the first place?

They scraped the posts. Just like google and bing and such do when they build their search indexes.

It's a fundamental part of how the open web works: you want your posts on tumblr to be visible to users, right? You want them to be readable?* Like, look how much stuff broke when twitter changed their whole read-while-not-logged-in policy, ruining a bunch of thread links/NSFW links. And if it's visible, it's scrapable. That's what the AI models were built on.

I've done website scraping before (not for AI models, of course. I was doing search engines and website archival), this is just how it works. You hire a few relatively smart CS graduates and tell them "build me a scraper that'll give us a bunch of tumblr posts" and they go off for a month or two and come back with a database of a few billion posts, and you stuff that into your AI model. That's how they got all the deviantart and flickr and twitter and pinterest and so on posts. They didn't pay for them: they just took them.

They only ever pay for this shit because either:

they fucked up in such a way that the site might be able to sue them for taking rather than paying

They can buy them cheaper than they can finish taking them. Maybe they'd need to pay the CS grads for an extra month? well, that might be more expensive than just throwing the site a couple hundred thousand bucks.

ANYWAY: my point is, don't treat this "oh no tumblr is selling our posts to AI" like it's a big thing that might happen and it would be bad to happen. Yes, it's bad, tumblr shouldn't do this, this'll let AI models get continual updates of content for far easier than just scraping them would be, tumblr betrayed user trust, and so on...

but realistically, this is not a black and white matter of "if only tumblr didn't do this, then we'd be safe from AI models!"

Nope. We already lost that battle. I'm sorry, and it does suck, but that's just how it is. The avalanche has already started, it's too late for the pebbles to vote. * I'm assuming here that you don't run a private blog that's set to only followers or something. You'd be safer then, of course, but you're not really my target audience for this rant

[mcmansionhell]

the motel room, or: on datedness

I.

Often I find myself nostalgic for things that haven't disappeared yet. This feeling is enhanced by the strange conviction that once I stop looking at these things, I will never see them again, that I am living in the last moment of looking. This is sense is strongest for me in the interiors of buildings perhaps because, like items of clothing, they are of a fashionable nature, in other words, more impermanent than they probably should be.

As I get older, to stumble on something truly dated, once a drag, is now a gift. After over a decade of real estate aggregation and the havoc it's wreaked on how we as a society perceive and decorate houses, if you're going to Zillow to search for the dated (which used to be like shooting fish in a barrel), you'll be searching aimlessly, for hours, to increasingly no avail, even with all the filters engaged. (The only way to get around this is locational knowledge of datedness gleaned from the real world.) If you try to find images of the dated elsewhere on the internet, you will find that the search is not intuitive. In this day and age, you cannot simply Google "80s hotel room" anymore, what with the disintegration of the search engine ecosystem and the AI generated nonsense and the algorithmic preference for something popular (the same specific images collected over and over again on social media), recent, and usually a derivative of the original search query (in this case, finding material along the lines of r/nostalgia or the Backrooms.)

To find what one is looking for online, one must game the search engine with filters that only show content predating 2021, or, even better, use existing resources (or those previously discovered) both online and in print. In the physical world of interiors, to find what one is looking for one must also now lurk around obscure places, and often outside the realm of the domestic which is so beholden to and cursed by the churn of fashion and the logic of speculation. Our open world is rapidly closing, while, paradoxically, remaining ostensibly open. It's true, I can open Zillow. I can still search. In the curated, aggregated realm, it is becoming harder and harder to find, and ultimately, to look.

But what if, despite all these changes, datedness was never really searchable? This is a strange symmetry, one could say an obscurity, between interiors and online. It is perhaps unintentional, and it lurks in the places where searching doesn't work, one because no one is searching there, or two, because an aesthetic, for all our cataloguing, curation, aggregation, hoarding, is not inherently indexable and even if it was, there are vasts swaths of the internet and the world that are not categorized via certain - or any - parameters. The internet curator's job is to find them and aggregate them, but it becomes harder and harder to do. They can only be stumbled upon or known in an outside, offline, historical or situational way. If to index, to aggregate, is, or at least was for the last 30 years, to profit (whether monetarily or in likes), then to be dated, in many respects, is the aesthetic manifestation of barely breaking even. Of not starting, preserving, or reinventing but just doing a job.

We see this online as well. While the old-web Geocities look and later Blingee MySpace-era swag have become aestheticized and fetishized, a kind of naive art for a naive time, a great many old websites have not received the same treatment. These are no less naive but they are harder to repackage or commodify because they are simple and boring. They are not "core" enough.

As with interiors, web datedness can be found in part or as a whole. For example, sites like Imgur or Reddit are not in and of themselves dated but they are full of remnants, of 15-year old posts and their "you, sir, have won the internet" vernacular that certainly are. Other websites are dated because they were made a long time ago by and for a clientele that doesn't have a need or the skill to update (we see this often with Web 2.0 e-commerce sites that figured out how to do a basic mobile page and reckoned it was enough). The next language of datedness, like the all-white landlord-special interior, is the default, clean Squarespace restaurant page, a landing space that's the digital equivalent of a flyer, rarely gleaned unless someone needs a menu, has a food allergy or if information about the place is not available immediately from Google Maps. I say this only to maintain that there is a continuity in practices between the on- and off-line world beyond what we would immediately assume, and that we cannot blame everything on algorithms.

But now you may ask, what is, exactly, datedness? Having spent two days in a distinctly dated hotel room, I've decided to sit in utter boredom with the numinous past and try and pin it down.

II.

I am in an obscure place. I am in Saint-Georges, Quebec, Canada, on assignment. I am staying at a specific motel, the Voyageur. By my estimation the hotel was originally built in the late seventies and I'd be shocked if it was older than 1989. The hotel exterior was remodeled sometime in the 2000s with EIFS cladding and beige paint. Above is a picture of my room, which, forgive me, is in the process of being inhabited. American (and to a lesser extent Canadian) hotel rooms are some of the most churned through, renovated spaces in the world, and it's pretty rare, unless you're staying in either very small towns or are forced by economic necessity to stay at real holes in the wall, to find ones from this era. The last real hitter for me was a 90s Day's Inn in the meme-famous Breezewood, PA during the pandemic.

At first my reaction to seeing the room was cautionary. It was the last room in town, and certainly compared to other options, probably not the world's first choice. However, after staying in real, genuine European shitholes covering professional cycling I've become a class-A connoisseur of bad rooms. This one was definitively three stars. A mutter of "okay time to do a quick look through." But upon further inspection (post-bedbug paranoia) I came to the realization that maybe the always-new brainrot I'd been so critical of had seeped a teeny bit into my own subconscious and here I was snubbing my nose at a blessing in disguise. The room is not a bad room, nor is it unclean. It's just old. It's dated. We are sentimental about interiors like this now because they are disappearing, but they are for my parents what 2005 beige-core is for me and what 2010s greige will become for the generation after. When I'm writing about datedness, I'm writing in general using a previous era's examples because datedness, by its very nature, is a transitional status. Its end state is the mixed emotion of seeing things for what they are yet still appreciating them, expressed here.

Datedness is the period between vintage and contemporary. It is the sentiment between quotidian and subpar. It is uncurated and preserved only by way of inertia, not initiative. It gives us a specific feeling we don't necessarily like, one that is deliberately evoked in the media subcultures surrounding so-called "liminal" spaces: the fuguelike feeling of being spatially trapped in a time while our real time is passing. Datedness in the real world is not a curated experience, it is only what was. It is different from nostalgia because it is not deliberately remembered, yearned for or attached to sweetness. Instead, it is somehow annoying. It is like stumbling into the world of adults as a child, but now you're the adult and the child in you is disappointed. (The real child-you forgot a dull hotel room the moment something more interesting came along.) An image of my father puts his car keys on the table, looks around and says, "It'll do." We have an intolerance for datedness because it is the realization of what sufficed. Sufficiency in many ways implies lack.

However, for all its datedness, many, if not all, of the things in this room will never be seen again if the room is renovated. They will become unpurchaseable and extinct. Things like the bizarrely-patterned linoleum tile in the shower, the hose connecting to the specific faucet of the once-luxurious (or at least middling) jacuzzi tub whose jets haven't been exercised since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The wide berth of the tank on the toilet. There is nothing, really, worth saving about these things. Even the most sentimental among us wouldn't dare argue that the items and finishes in this room are particularly important from a design or historical standpoint. Not everything old has a patina. They're too cheaply made to salvage. Plastic tile. Bowed plywood. The image-artifacts of these rooms, gussied up for Booking dot com, will also, inevitably disappear, relegated to the dustheap of web caches and comments that say "it was ok kinda expensive but close to twon (sic)." You wouldn't be able to find them anyway unless you were looking for a room.

One does, of course, recognize a little bit of design in what's here. Signifiers of an era. The wood-veneer of the late 70s giving way to the pastel overtones of the 80s. Perhaps even a slow 90s. The all-in-one vanity floating above the floor, a modernist basement bathroom hallmark. White walls as a sign of cleanliness. Gestures, in the curved lines of the nightstands, towards postmodernity. Metallic lamp bases with wide-brimmed shades, a whisper of glamor. A kind of scalloped aura to the club chairs. The color teal mediated through hundreds if not thousands of shoes. Yellowing plastic, including the strips of "molding" that visually tie floor to wall. These are remnants (or are they intuitions?) of so many movements and micromovements, none of them definite enough to point to the influence of a single designer, hell, even of a single decade, just strands of past-ness accumulated into one thread, which is cheapness. Continuity exists in the materials only because everything was purchased as a set from a wholesale catalog.

In some way a hotel is supposed to be placeless. Anonymous. Everything tries to be that way now, even houses. Perhaps because we don't like the way we spy on ourselves and lease our images out to the world so we crave the specificity of hotel anonymity, of someplace we move through on our way to bigger, better or at least different things. The hotel was designed to be frictionless but because it is in a little town, it sees little use and because it sees little use, there are elements that can last far longer than they were intended and which inadvertently cause friction. (The janky door unlocks with a key. The shower hose keeps coming out of the faucet. It's deeply annoying.)

Lack of wear and lack of funds only keep them that way. Not even the paper goods of the eighties have been exhausted yet. Datedness is not a choice but an inevitability. Because it is not a choice, it is not advertised except in a utilitarian sense. It is kept subtle on the hotel websites, out of shame. Because it does not subscribe to an advertiser's economy of the now, of the curated type rather than the "here is my service" type, it disappears into the folds of the earth and cannot be searched for in the way "design" can. It can only be discovered by accident.

When I look at all of these objects and things, I do so knowing I will never see them again, at least not all here together like this, as a cohesive whole assembled for a specific purpose. I don't think I'll ever have reason to come back to this town or this place, which has given me an unexpected experience of being peevish in my father's time. Whenever I end up in a place like this, where all is as it was, I get the sense that it will take a very long time for others to experience this sensation again with the things my generation has made. The machinations of fashion work rapaciously to make sure that nothing is ever old, not people, not rooms, not items, not furniture, not fabrics, not even design, that old matron who loves to wax poetic about futurity and timelessness. The plastic-veneered particleboard used here is now the bedrock of countless landfills. Eventually it will become the chemical-laced soil upon which we build our condos. It is possible that we are standing now at the very last frontier of our prior datedness. The next one has not yet elided. It's a special place. Spend a night. Take pictures.

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[sumitkala]

[orion-star-chaser]

I love getting to talk to people on the other side of the world.

I love getting to talk to people who make me feel less alone.

I love that iv met people I would have never gotten the chance to know thanks to the internet.

But also I fucking loath that websites can just go "fuck you we save everything you do online and you don't get a choice".

[freemicrotools]

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