Of Banana Slugs, SEO, and Finding Joy in Little Things

In the fall of 2000, Jasmine Morrow, an undergraduate student at San Francisco State University, was taking a Biogeography course (GEOG 316). In that course it seems Jasmine was required to write ~1500 words about the biogeography of the banana slug, and then to publish that biogeography on the web. Jasmine chose to use a light blue background for the site, pairing it with a sufficiently contrasting shade of brown for the text. In keeping with the times, Comic Sans was selected as the font du jour. It was and is, a fantastic representative example of the amateur web design of the era:

Fast forward 20 years and we find a young English professor who has finished his work for the day. While waiting for his wife to finish her meeting about seismic...engineerings, he decides he wants to learn more about where he might go to find banana slugs. So he types "banana slug range" into the Google search bar and hits "return." 

Let's pause in our narrative for a moment -- the suspense is palpable, I know, and I apologize -- to talk about search engines.

The very first result on the very first page of a search engine results list is, as we all know, the most prized of all positions in which a website might find itself. That first page is the object of an entire industry in the modern marketplace. Dozens of my very own friends have dedicated their lives to helping companies land their websites on this most auspicious of real estate.

Occasionally though, when a website answers a search engine user's query so perfectly that its greatness cannot be denied, the search engine will go beyond merely giving the site a place on its coveted page-1 results, and it will further extoll the virtues of this website by copypasting some of the website's text onto page 1 itself, naming this a "featured snippet." 

This is, truly, the highest honor to which any website can hope to aspire.

Returning again to our young English professor who has finished his work and who wants to learn more about slugs, as he sets forth on his quest, typing the words "banana slug range" and hitting "return," he finds that the Google has returned to him a first result featured snippet. 

The source of this most exalted website was not, as one might have guessed, a Wikipedia page (search result #2). 

It was not an eminently credible science outreach publication (search result #3). 

It did not feature the work of scientists who have dedicated their lives to studying biologies and geographies and such (search result #s 4, 5, 6, and 7)

No, none of these. 

Instead, as you've surely guessed, the search engine algorithm gods (so inscrutable and powerful are the ways of the search engine algorithm that it unquestionably merits being described so) bestowed this honor upon none other than the lowly undergrad Jasmine Morrow's light blue, Comic Sans-y homework website, "The Biogeography of the Banana Slug." 

My friends, I am the young English professor in this tale. (Twist!) 

And let me say that in this moment, the cup of my joy is full to overflowing.