The Jerx SEO List

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Who is the "Murphy" behind "Murphy's Magic"? Is it Audie Murphy?

Or someone else born 100+ years ago? What I mean is, is it someone who doesn't understand how googling works?

I'm introducing a new feature on the site where I track offenders of a completely avoidable unforced error.

As most of you know, in web analytics and marketing, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. That is, ways of making it easier for people to find your site or your product when searching online.

But here it means something different. On my SEO List I'll be tracking Self Exposure Offenders.

Self exposure offenders? Don't you already track that on the GLOMM?

No. This is a different type of self exposure.

These are tricks that expose themselves by having the name of the trick printed on the trick itself.

For example, when Murphy's Magic put "Ghost Deck" on their trick called Ghost Deck.

More recently, they just re-released an older trick called the Fortune Teller's Book of Days. It's marketed as The Fortune Teller's Book of Days. And… hmmm… let's see what it says on the cover of the prop you use during the trick…

It's 2026, goofballs. This is not acceptable. Everyone has Google. You can't be giving people the information any mildly interested person could use to confirm this is just something you bought at Penguin Magic.

Now, they couldn't really have marketed the trick under a different name, given that it originally came out decades ago. But they could have just changed the name on the prop for the new version.

  • The Oracle's Almanac

  • The Seer's Book of Days

  • The Fortune Teller's Birthday Guide

  • The Cartomancer's Perpetual Calendar

Whatever.

I would recommend not buying anything that I add to the SEO List. Not because the trick is bad necessarily, but just because it's setting you up to get your trick googled out from under you.

My goal isn't to sabotage anyone's magic release. My goal is simply to get people to expend two seconds of thought before making this mistake.

Until now, there has been no centralized authority willing to stand in front of the industry and say, “Hey. Maybe don’t print the Google search term directly on the prop.” Now there is. It's me. I'm here to call you stupid for doing that. Please, use your head.

These aren't difficult fixes. You've already done the hard part—creating or licensing a good trick. Changing a few words on a prop before it goes to print costs nothing. The SEO List exists to make not doing that embarrassing enough that maybe someone will pause before they hit send on the print order.