permaculture

["paul wheaton" <paul@richsoil.com>]

I wrote an article in 1994 called "Organic Lawn Care for the Cheap and
Lazy."  I was trying to persuade folks to drop the chemical army in one of
the biggest places chemicals are consumed:  Lawns.

In 1995 I put it on the web.  There wasn't much on the web then, and there
were loads of search engines, so it got lots of traffic. Years passed.  When
searching for "lawn care" on google, my article was the first link for
years.  Then in the top three.  Then google changed their algorithms and I
moved to page two.

I used to get thousands of visitors.  I would get lots of email from people
saying that they had dropped all chemical use.  At one point I did a bunch
of math and figured that my little article may have eliminated hundreds of
tons of pesticides.  Plus at least that much in chemical fertilizers.  Maybe
a few hundred gas mowers too.

When I google "lawn care" now, I see:  1) pesticides, 2) gas mowers, 3)
pesticides, 4) IPM pesticides, 5) pesticide/organic neutral, 6) pesticides,
7) pesticides, 8) pesticides, 9) "Natural" (advocating IPM, corn gluten
products and, well, lots of products), 10) pesticides.

I'm at number 16. "Organic Lawn Care for the Cheap and Lazy"
http://www.richsoil.com/lawn

Number 9 is okay.

There's a pretty good one at number 15 called simply "Organic lawn care
guide" http://www.organiclawncaretips.com

I have done some research in the last few weeks on how google ranks stuff.
There are lots of factors, but the most important factor is .... links.
Each link from a decent site counts as one vote.  Each link from an icky
site (determined by google to be spam-ish) is a negative vote.   Each link
from a large, well respected site is considered to be worth, say, 100
votes.  Many links from one site is zero or negative votes.

Right now, my page apparently has about 19 votes (google "link:
www.richsoil.com/lawn").

I guess what I'm asking for is ... votes.  If not for my article, then for
another organic lawn care site that you like that is pretty close to the
top.

Everybody can vote.  If you have a web site or blog, voting is already
easy.  Just make a link.  If you don't, just start a thread about lawn care
in your favorite forum and make a link.

The main thing I'm suggesting is that when folks go looking for how to take
care of their lawn, they see an organic choice.  Hopefully something
persuasive.  And we can all help make that happen.  In turn, this step could
have a very large impact on the amount of pesticides consumed.

Please?