Ego Blindness

I got a message from friend about whether I was using canonical meta tags in this blog.  I didn't even know what those were, so I didn't respond and went-a-googling.  I found they were tags that you put in the header of your blog pages so the search robots/analytics knew that no matter what link you used to get to the blog it would be registered as a hit for the link in the meta tag.*  This is important as folks can get to this blog with a slew of different links (varietymeat.blogspot.com, timebombresearch.com, www.timebombresearch.com, and blog.timebombresearch.com) and one of the things that determine the position of the blog in the list of search results is number of hits.

I also found how to apply canonical meta tags to Blogger blogs but was totally flummoxed when I tried to follow the procedures outlined.

But that, in and of itself, is not what I wanted to talk about.

I didn't respond immediately to my knowledgeable friend as I didn't want to look the fool.  I've been working with computers for almost 25 years and with the web since it's inception.  Ego.  When I did respond and related that I really had no idea (using language to attempt to hide my ignorance) he happily retorted in just a few minutes saying he looked at the blog code and the tags were already there.  I am dismayed I didn't just respond immediately to him and confess my ignorance.  It would have served two purposes, one I'd know to skip attempting the implementation of them, and two, I'd had more to discuss with this friend that I've been trying to reconnect with.  He also had the simple solution of just looking at the code to see if the tags were already there (something you'd think a computer veteran like myself should have thought of immediately.)  I'd like to think I would have still done the research to figure out what they were.

Is my need for total self-reliance just ego?  Probably, mostly.

How about you?  Have you ever caught yourself?

*Please, please, please, if I'm stating this incorrectly or completely off the mark, someone let me know in the comments or any other way possible.  Thank you!