New website

While launching my new website is a big thing for me, it’s not relative to the rest of the World Wide Web. If you look at the search results in Google for example. Rockets are cool is just 1 site the crawl out of 1.4 trillion others. [mfn]To be very clear, I am only talking about accessible and “open” sites. Not the Dark Web. Who knows how many sites are hosted there.[/mfn]

Another fact is that 10,500 websites are created every hour. So by the time you read this, there may be another 50,000 more websites online. And that fact actually raises 2 important questions:

1. How do readers find my website?
2. Why should I start a blog?

Let me start with the second question because it is quite easy for me to answer: I have been in doubt for years about whether or not to start a website, but I already have put so much time and energy into this site that I simply no longer dare to look at myself if this site would be among the 83% inactive sites.

As for the first question, that one is a bit more difficult to answer. SEO [mfn] Search Engine Optimisation, which means getting your website or app at the top results in search engines.[/mfn] has 2 components: a technical and a psychological one. Because SEO floats on the somewhat philosophical question: what is search?

Is it just typing or speaking some random words in Google? [mfn]I’m using Google here for convenience since 96% of internet users use this search engine, but this example also applies to any other search engine out there, such as DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo! etc[/mfn]

The answer is Yes and No. Yes, because Google is shockingly good at serving up exactly the results and sites you were looking for. And that’s even better than you might realize.

Take the word Friday, for example. An ambiguous word with many meanings:

• I might want to know more about the fifth day of the week, Friday
• I might want to know more about the scary movie, Friday the 13th
• I may be considering it as an option as a name for an unborn child
• I might want to know more about Friday, a character from the book Robinson Crusoe
• I might be looking for the song Friday by British DJ Riton
• I might be spelling it wrong and actually mean Frida
• It could be that I am looking for a book/movie/series with Friday in the title
• And so on…

However, I typed this in today, a week before Black Friday and so I mainly saw results around Black Friday, which makes sense, since Google knows it’s almost coming.

The path before

What you’re looking for before typing in that one word

If I had used the search terms [ movie ] [ horror ] before my search attempt on [Friday], then there was a good chance that I would get the scary movie Friday the 13th.

Had I typed in [ book ] [ Daniel Defoe ] first, or just [ book ], chances are I would get Friday the character in the book Robinson Crusoe.

To me, searching is more than randomly typing some words and hoping for the best that it will work out. Searching and, in a sense, also investigating, is about consciously thinking about which answer you want to which question. [mfn] I can recommend the excellent Power Searching with Google course from Daniel Russell on edX. It’s a little outdated but the basics still apply. (See the link down below. [/mfn]

I bet if you type the word [Tesla] into Google right now, you’ll get all the results about Elon Musk’s electric car company.

But if I type [Tesla] in Google, I get the famous scientist Nikola Tesla. And that’s mainly because I’ve searched for the scientist many times and never for for the electric car.

Google’s search algorithm works great, but you still need to be aware of the keyword you’re using to find the information or website you’re really looking for.

Or not.

Sometimes you can find an answer to a question, or a solution to a problem when you’re not actually looking for it. Or as BLØF puts it so beautifully:

You rarely look for what you find.

BLØF, De mooiste verliezers

And that brings me back to the raison d’être of this website. Why did I start now? How does this website differ from the 1.4 trillion other websites? That’s a hard one to answer, I must admit. Because when I say that I really add something to the rich palette of information on the internet, I also say that 1.4 trillion websites aren’t enough.

That makes me A) arrogant and B) an expert, which I am not in either case.

But I do believe that every product that is made with passion, dedication, and love, like Rockets are cool by me, deserves a place. And that there is a group of readers for whom the content is valuable. Readers who, like me, want to learn and start asking questions. Starting with a small detail or a vague idea. Questions I’d be happy to answer, even though I’m not an expert. I don’t have all the knowledge and answers either, but I believe that with an open and curious mind, you can find them.

The uncertainty remains

Sometimes you just have to start

And so today is the moment that I will launch this website. I suspect that some things never really get used to, such as having to speak in front of a large audience, or, in my case, launching this website. Because if I’m honest, nothing is as safe as to keep dreaming and doing nothing. At least for me.

If you want to reach the highest rung of a ladder in any area, the easiest thing to do is flatten that ladder.

Mehro

Not so long ago I saw a documentary about writer Thomas Roosenboom, entitled: The Uncertainty Remains. In this video, he is portrayed while working on a new novel. And although he has already won two major literature prizes, uncertainty continues to gnaw at him. No matter how successful or famous you are, uncertainty plays a role in many. The challenge is to keep going. To not be belittled by your fears.

That’s why today is an important day for me. Rockets are cool is live.