Estimated Reading Time: 6 Minutes
There is a fantastic amount of old information available online. But, how do you know if an online article or blog gives you excellent and up-to-date Costa Rica information or if it’s outdated?
Google sends me messages when somebody writes a blog or an article about Costa Rica real estate, moving to Costa Rica, retiring to Costa Rica, or living in Costa Rica.
Very few realtors are writers; most don’t have a flair for writing or are too busy. But, of course, that’s because they sell real estate.
Therefore, many realtors hire writers who don’t know anything about our clients’ topics. So they pull the information from the web. That’s why many articles are total bullshit articles and published as a newsfeed on hundreds of fake newspapers and Facebook, and other social media.
These blogs are usually fake information and packed with keywords that they think will help them on their Google ranking to get a better position on the Google searches. But, unfortunately, they don’t do anything but fill the world wide web with garbage and make doing your due diligence on Costa Rica a lot harder than it should.
Ghostwriters
Most of these articles are written by ghostwriters who have never visited Costa Rica or the place they are writing about. For years, ghostwriters would just copy/paste all the text they could find online about a particular topic put it in a “spinning” program that rewrites existing articles. Google’s rules have changed that, but ghostwriters still use the data they find elsewhere online.
The Date
Keeping up with old articles is not so easy. Few realtors ever look at articles they wrote X years ago. That’s because they’re too busy. I have over 1,200 articles published, and I try to update them now and then, but I’m also guilty of not having it all up to date.
Therefore, check on the publication date of the article. Usually, you can find the date right beneath the title. If it doesn’t have a date, it probably is from around 2005. If so, you don’t want to read it anyway.
Blogging
So how can you make sure you are reading the correct articles? That’s why Justin Hall invented blogging, and it is a great invention. Many bloggers send you a newsletter to remind you they wrote a new blog. You might have subscribed to a newsletter months ago and don’t even remember you did. Or you subscribed, but your life has taken a different turn, and you are no longer interested in that newsletter.
About half my subscribers never even open the newsletter I send them every week. I’m sure they’re stuck in their spam folder, or they’re just too busy to read them. So if you’re interested in lost newsletters, check your spam folder now and then. If you are a Gmail user, check your “Promotions” folder, where newsletters automatically go.
Get rid of the bullshit.
You probably are already receiving many emails about a property for sale in Costa Rica, living in Costa Rica, and moving to Costa Rica without telling you anything that you did not already know.
NOW is the time to weed through all those newsletters, spam, and other emails you receive and get rid of all those that smell of bullshit about Costa Rica. If mine is one of them, so be it! But I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know. You’ll learn that most newsletters you receive you have registered for at one time. But you probably forgot about them.
When doing an internet search for a specific topic, type in the year you’re searching behind the search terms. That will get rid of most old articles and supply you with plenty of good Costa Rica information.
How to get rid of unwanted Costa Rica information
With today’s software availability, unsubscribing is automatic as soon as you click the unsubscribe button. At least mine is! If you found a website through a newsletter, you can unsubscribe at the bottom of that newsletter. If you get it again, look up the email address used to send you the newsletter and block the address on your email software or mark it as junk so that you won’t see it anymore.
Good and up-to-date
For good Costa Rica information on Costa Rica, go on any website you find about this topic and look at their blog. See if the blogs are short, so they are more like a thought, something you would put on Twitter or Facebook. See if their blogs are interesting, if they have topics that interest you or if you feel they are full of “it.” If the website is worth coming back to, mark it as a favorite on your computer or subscribe to their newsletter. Another great option, the one I use, is Google Alert, where you can tell Google to send you an email every time there is an article that might be of interest to you.
I hope the above helps you get rid of the bad stuff and keep the exciting stuff.
If you don’t want to receive my newsletter but are interested in reading my blogs, I invite you to log onto our blog every Sunday, and you will see at least one or two new blogs. And do not forget to check out the latest Costa Rica real estate listings. Happy reading!
Photo by Cosmic Timetraveler on Unsplash
