C'mon, Esquire, You Can Do Better than THAT

Okay, we admit it ... we want to be the best.

Here at The Man Rules, we like to entertain and enlighten, maybe make you laugh every once in a while. But deep down, where the rubber meets the road, our goal is to be Number 1. We want to be THE Man Rules site on the Internet.

So, every once in a while, we search "man rules" on Google, just to see where we stack up. And we'll be completely honest here -- when we first started this blog back in July of 2012, we were waaaaay down the list. There are something like 1.15 billion hits on Google when you search for "man rules" (it's a BIG Internet, kids), and in the beginning we were bringing up the rear. Like, we were ranked 3 billionth, or something.

But we persevered, and we kept on plugging, and we didn't quit, and we kept our noses to the grindstone, and we tried to think of other metaphors but we got tired and wandered off to drink some chocolate milk before coming back to finish typing this sentence. And lo and behold, we started climbing the ranks on Google. Before long, we were ranked 1 billionth, and then in the hundreds of millions. The day we cracked the top 1,000, you should have seen the celebration around here. We're still finding stray pieces of confetti in unusual places.

So after 16 months of blood, sweat and tears (not to mention a lot of chocolate milk), we're sitting pretty in the Google rankings right now. It varies from day to day, but usually we're somewhere in the neighborhood of the top 15 to 20 sites that pop up when you search "man rules." Good for a solid page 2 listing most of the time. Not bad for a little ol' blog from Alabama.

And now we're jockeying for position, trying to move even further up in the rankings. Maybe one day we'll hit the first page of results on Google. Hey, we can dream, can't we?

Here's the thing, though -- most days, we're right behind another site that features some Man Rules. Maybe you've heard of this site; it's called Esquire. Yes, THAT Esquire. The Magazine for Men. With something like 700,000 subscribers. For some time now, Esquire ("The guide for men who want to live a fuller, richer, more rewarding life") has published a series of Rules for Men. And since Esquire has been around since 1932, helping fulfill and enrich men's lives that whole time, they've had quite a head start on us here at The Man Rules. They even say so on their Rules for Men page: "Favorite (and funny) truths pulled from our pages over the years."

Now, I have no beef with Esquire. I'm sure it's a great magazine with a wonderful personality. But it's in our way, and we need to pass it. According to the Google rankings, their list of Rules for Men is more popular than we are, and that's bad.

Here's the real problem, though: The Rules for Men that Esquire puts out are ... how can I say this delicately ... stupider than the stupidest thing you can imagine.

I mean, I've got no problem ranking behind a site that provides great, funny, entertaining Man Rules for you. If they try their best, and we try our best, and they win, that's life. At least, it's life until we can find them and kill them.

But Esquire is beating us with some truly LAME Man Rules. And you don't have to believe us; try these on for size (these were pulled directly from the Esquire Rules for Men page). Please hold your laughter and applause until the end.

Rule No. 411: It's okay to die never knowing how electric eels mate without stunning one another.
Rule No. 41: No man's blender is getting enough use these days.
Rule No. 27: There is no shame in a good mango.
Rule No. 205: The man who wears a bunny suit is a greater man than the man who wears a business suit.
Rule No. 495: If you are a movie character in a hurry and are driving through a rural area, you will run into a herd of sheep crossing the road.
Rule No. 192: Female pastry chefs are to men as male architects are to women.

THIS?! THIS crap is what's beating us in the Google search rankings? Mangos and blenders? I don't even know what that last one about pastry chefs and architects means. And you'll never convince me the bunny suit rule was written by somebody who was sober.

And they don't even EXPLAIN their Rules. They just throw them out there, willy-nilly, and figure "Hey, we've been around for 90 years; they'll laugh at us anyway." Sorry, guys, but that's now how it works. You've got to give some context for these things, or people will just read them and say "Man, the writers at Esquire must have a great drug dealer."

I mean, compare that list of Rules with some of the ones we've given you in our short history here:

Never stick an eel up your butt. 
Don't wear capri pants.
Don't wear big belt buckles (unless you're a cowboy).

And of course, the most popular Rule we've written thus far:

Don't wear baseball caps backwards.

This is important stuff here! This is the kind of stuff your Dad would have told you if he hadn't been killed in that freak blender accident while he was wearing a bunny suit when you were two! (I can imagine how some of those conversations might have gone: "Son, hunker down with me here a minute. Got something important to tell you. One day, you might be tempted to stick an eel up your butt. I'm here to say: Don't do it.")

So here's what we're asking you to do: Send a link to this post (and any others from this site that you like) to every single person you know, and about 13 percent of all the people you don't know. We need to get a lot of hits on the site here, so we can pass those goobers at Esquire in the Google "man rules" rankings and quit laying awake at night thinking to ourselves "THAT'S what's keeping us off page 1 in the Google results? THAT?"

Sure, you might think, "The Man Rules will never beat Esquire. Esquire is too big, and too old, and just too well-established to let some upstart blog pass them in the Google rankings. Just give up."

To which we say, "Sorry ... we stepped out to get some chocolate milk. Did you say something?"

(c) 2013 John Puckett