The Wonder Of Search Engines
In a shameless bid for good will, I announce my first "Blogiversary." Actually, I started this on my other journal a year ago after returning from a spring trip with the official family to Chiricahua National Monument in Arizona. Of course, I thought the world would beat a path to my door, seeking insightful commentary about the great outdoors.
I was wrong.
Nonetheless, between that site and this, I've hung in for a full year.
(Note to self: Wait thirty seconds for applause to subside.)
Thank you. . . No really, it's nothing. . . You're too kind. . . Stop it . . . I'm blushing now. . . Really. . . What? . . . No, Ms. Jolie, you may not give me a back rub . . . . I'm quite happily married, thank you . . . Don't !. . . I said, "Don't." . . . I mean it. . . Unhand me, you brazen hussy! . . . Help! . . . Help! . . .Security !!!! . . . . .
Where was I? Oh, yes ...
As with most people who "blog," I have installed a hit counter on these pages. Its code sits in the body of my template and dutifully records visits. While I don't look at it every day, I certainly keep an eye on it. If nothing else, it is evidence of my own Narcissism, out there in front of God and everybody. As of this writing, I've topped three thousand visits.
Occasionally, I like to see how visitors find my site. (Editor's Note: Emphasis corrected) It would appear most stumble upon these pages via the "Next Blog" button in the upper right, where they are immediately overcome with boredom, frantically trying to hit the button again, to find the latest photos of unclad mega-babes.
Then there are those who pop in from other sites, mostly from those listed to the right, which I read daily and who have kindly linked to these pages.
Finally, there are those few who find this journal via various search engines, like "Google" or "Technorati." Those can be quite interesting.
In the last few days, I've discovered the following:
Someone in the Ile de France researching the Soviet Military on Google was directed to this post about my father-in-law. Please note, my post was the first listed, at least in Paris. People pay Google good money for that sort of placement. (Fortunately, s/he in France was not directed here. S/he might have been insulted.)
Also, someone from Nassau Community College in Baldwin, New York was trying to find life rafts. S/he stumbled upon my St. Patrick's Day Post. (This visitor had his/her "safe search" option in the "off" position. Makes one wonder what the searches were immediately preceding or following the "life raft" query.)
(There are other searches as well, but these tend to involve the salacious invisible "meta tags" I have embedded in my template HTML in order to inflate my "hit count." Thank you, Britney Spears and the Ostrogoths who first used the word "naqaþs.")
All this leads to the question, "What's the strangest search engine request which has resulted in a visit to your blog, no matter how brief the visit was?"
Anyway, for those who pop in and comment, thanks. This last year has been fun both here and on my other blog. I hope to keep this up for a while.
Cheers.
R. Sherman
I was wrong.
Nonetheless, between that site and this, I've hung in for a full year.
(Note to self: Wait thirty seconds for applause to subside.)
Thank you. . . No really, it's nothing. . . You're too kind. . . Stop it . . . I'm blushing now. . . Really. . . What? . . . No, Ms. Jolie, you may not give me a back rub . . . . I'm quite happily married, thank you . . . Don't !. . . I said, "Don't." . . . I mean it. . . Unhand me, you brazen hussy! . . . Help! . . . Help! . . .Security !!!! . . . . .
Where was I? Oh, yes ...
As with most people who "blog," I have installed a hit counter on these pages. Its code sits in the body of my template and dutifully records visits. While I don't look at it every day, I certainly keep an eye on it. If nothing else, it is evidence of my own Narcissism, out there in front of God and everybody. As of this writing, I've topped three thousand visits.
Occasionally, I like to see how visitors find my site. (Editor's Note: Emphasis corrected) It would appear most stumble upon these pages via the "Next Blog" button in the upper right, where they are immediately overcome with boredom, frantically trying to hit the button again, to find the latest photos of unclad mega-babes.
Then there are those who pop in from other sites, mostly from those listed to the right, which I read daily and who have kindly linked to these pages.
Finally, there are those few who find this journal via various search engines, like "Google" or "Technorati." Those can be quite interesting.
In the last few days, I've discovered the following:
Someone in the Ile de France researching the Soviet Military on Google was directed to this post about my father-in-law. Please note, my post was the first listed, at least in Paris. People pay Google good money for that sort of placement. (Fortunately, s/he in France was not directed here. S/he might have been insulted.)
Also, someone from Nassau Community College in Baldwin, New York was trying to find life rafts. S/he stumbled upon my St. Patrick's Day Post. (This visitor had his/her "safe search" option in the "off" position. Makes one wonder what the searches were immediately preceding or following the "life raft" query.)
(There are other searches as well, but these tend to involve the salacious invisible "meta tags" I have embedded in my template HTML in order to inflate my "hit count." Thank you, Britney Spears and the Ostrogoths who first used the word "naqaþs.")
All this leads to the question, "What's the strangest search engine request which has resulted in a visit to your blog, no matter how brief the visit was?"
Anyway, for those who pop in and comment, thanks. This last year has been fun both here and on my other blog. I hope to keep this up for a while.
Cheers.
R. Sherman
posted by R. Sherman at 5:09 AM
11 Comments:
Well done, my friend. Good stuff here, as these musings add a great deal of thought and humor to my day.
Looking forward to many more!
Posts like this one remind me why I come here every day and hover over my browser clicking refresh, refresh, refresh. Congrats on the anniversary!
"While I don't look at it every day, I certainly keep an eye on it. If nothing else, it is evidence of my own Narcissism, out there in front of God and everybody."
Excellently put. I consider my own visits to Statcounter as evidence of the same.
"Occasionally, I like to see how visitors find my sight."
Oh, right, that's what I meant to say. Although few of my visitors have actually made it into my sight. Most of them remain e-acquaintances, sadly.
On the search engine hits...perhaps the best one is "picture of Mugsy Bogues dunking" which leads here. That one's huge.
Yikes! The problem with these things is proofreading. I will correct the errors.
Cheers.
Fabulous, A.J. As I think I told you, I found you trying to look up information on caving in Missouri. Funny things, those search engines.
Thanks for the good wishes.
I have no idea how to find this information, but I bet 'cow handbag', 'norks' and 'politicians' come quite near the top.
Aunty, I preferred your other picture. Thanks for popping in.
Cheers.
As you can imagine, Randall, I get a fair few people on my site who've googled 'child bride' and on one occasion, someone googling "Asian child bride". He (I'm assuming it was a he) must have trawled through a lot of sites before he got to me, 'cos I'm not Asian, so i must have been quite far dowm on the result list.
I've had a "wellie boot, muddy puddle" seeker (now that one must have been a real pervert!) and a lot of searches for various Olympians I mentioned when the Olympics were on.
Somebody from Uzbekistan came on a Google search once, but i can't remember what for, I just remember being flabbergasted pcb had had a visitor from Uzbekistan. I love the internet!
Hi Sam. Yes, I can imagine the confusion. Perhaps you should put a disclaimer in your template.
Cheers.
Randall: I certainly hope you do keep it up. I consider you a blogging friend.
I'm sure Sam is cleverer than I but when I attempted to put a disclaimer on my blog I got a whole page of HTML which I could not shift and was the first thing people saw. Eventually I managed - all by myself -to start afresh but am now nervous of doing anything out of the norm - blog-wise.
I love seeing all the different nationalities in the stats but have never checked how they found me.
First and foremost: A very happy blogoversary to you, and many happy returns of the day.
Now: you ask about odd visitations to one's own blog thanks to Google and other search engines. For a long time, that would have been the visits from (I assume) white supremacists interested in Charlie Chaplin's Jewish ancestry (this because of my discussion of his film The Great Dictator, in which, ironically, I actually say something about HITLER'S Jewish ancestry). But never mind that, because that oddity was long ago supplanted by someone searching for "animal humping," which led him/her to this post. Whatever that poor soul was looking for, I'm pretty certain it wasn't a poor parody of a Geoffrey Reggio film. But then again, sometimes the best things we find are precisely those things we didn't know we needed to know about to begin with . . . like Mr. Sherman's blog, for example.
Thanks for the visits and well wishes, Pat and John. John, your story wins the prize so far. It's fun to imagine the face of the searcher upon finding you.
Cheers.
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