Firstly, let me say that I am sure all our thoughts went out to the victims, their families and friends of these bombings, and other incidents where innocent people lose their lives. Secondly, an SEO ezine is not the place to debate the rights and wrongs of such events.

However, I would like to use the numbers involved to show you how there are patterns in everything if you have the eyes to see. Where some people hear music and see the chords, we see numbers, patterns and synchronicities. For us this is a major part of SEO work; spotting the trends, analysing how small changes affect page rankings and which keywords are being used to find our pages.

As a Maths man, I think Pythagorus may well be considered the father of Western Mathematics. Who can forget the great mantra "The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides" ? they don't write 'em like that any more! But how many of you realise that he is also the father of Numerology ("Number is the law of the Universe") ? the science of number patterns and fate (his words, not mine).Numerology has been discounted by the mainstream in the West as "stuff and nonsense", but many other cultures still revere it. Sceptics, please bear with me, I am not for or against Numerology, but the number patterns I hope you will see are very interesting.

So, back to the London bombings, what time did they happen? The first reports I saw were for 3 simultaneous explosions at 8.49 in the morning rush hour. Do you see it ? look again, play with the numbers ? any co-incidences you can see. OK, coming ready or not! 8.49 is also 11 minutes to 9 ? now where have I seen those numbers before. Interestingly, in the UK, 9/11 is actually 11/9 (we put day then month).

OK, we'll put that down to coincidence, now do you remember the date of the bombings? Well, it was the date of our first ezine 7th July 2005. At first glance there doesn't seem to be much there. However, in Numerology, numbers in dates with multiple digits are reduced by adding them together until a single digit is obtained. So 7th July 2005 becomes 7/7/2+0+0+5 = 777.

I am sure most of you know what 666 stands for, but what about 777? Well, just as 666 is the "sign of the beast", 777 is the "sign of the spiritual warrior". Pythagorus believed that by attaching events to certain numbers or dates, you could change their vibration and reduce or increase their power. Whether we believe in Numerology or not, there are obviously people around who understand, believe in and use these ideas to their perceived advantage.

So, you can see that if you spend your life looking at numbers and patterns for SEO, it creeps into your whole view of life. Remember that all of the search engine companies use algorithms to calculate where a site will appear in the search results for a specific page. Our job is to understand these patterns of activity and use this knowledge to the advantage of our customers.

So, in summary, being a customer of SEO Gurus is really like doing work in the community ? after all you are keeping two very sad, old guys out of the asylum!

John Fowler trained as a Mathematican and has worked in the IT industry for over 30 years, much of the time in sales related functions. He now spends his time between being a partner in SEO Gurus and as a sales and management trainer for ICT companies. John can be contacted via http://www.seogurus.co.uk