Thursday, December 08, 2005

The inscrutability of Google

One of the interesting things about having a site meter attached to this blog is that I can see how someone found their way here. For instance, if they went through a search engine, I can see the actual word or phrase they used.

Sometimes this gets nauseating, as the pornographic search phrases people come up with are beyond my understanding of human sexuality. But other times it's just perplexing. For instance, if you Google "December Horoscopes," you will get 44,800 hits, and my dinky little blog comes up at number 5. I did indeed post an entry with that title. But why is my blog higher than so many hundreds of dedicated Zodiac sites?

I wonder how many Google hits I'd get if I titled an entry "Great American Novel"? Probably not as many as if I used "desperate housewife amputees with naked barnyard friends."

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's a fascinating game to play, isn't it? Trying to figure out how people come to the blog - and more interesting, why on earth they were searching for some of the things they apparently were searching for?!

Stephanie said...

I check this too....sometimes I get hits for "ask a theologian," which makes me happy. Sometimes I get hits for "condoms," which doesn't especially please me.

Myfanwy Collins said...

Ha! Ellen, you are hilarious. Around Thanksgiving I was getting many, many hits for "can turkeys fly" because of something I had posted about whether or not turkeys cann fly a couple of years ago. Right now I'm getting a few for "the history of eggnog" (same reason except switch flying and turkeys with history and eggnog). And yes, the porno ones are a bit scary.

Katie said...

My number one hit is "funny nicknames." People must be so disappointed when they find me.

Ellen said...

Hi Melanie! Some of the search phrases are crazy, aren't they? A few have been truly disgusting. I'm happy to say, though, that I do get some hits from your terrific blog.

Steph, if "condoms" is the worst of it, consider yourself lucky. I've gotten some hits that have made me consider alerting the police.

Myf, you seem to get a lot of hits from people doing fairly legitmate research. That's kind of cool. I do let a lot of hits for people looking for that Dorothy Parker story, "From the Diary of a New York Lady." (Did you ever read that? It's hilarious.)

Katie, I'll have to check out your entry on funny nicknames. Do you have one?

RobinSlick said...

Even funnier are the weird little stalkers who come by...especially those connected with Zoetrope. I have one emotionally unstable chick who visits my blog every day and more than once...I haven't a clue what she's looking for, other than maybe she's scared I'll get famous before she will.

Hahahahahaha - she should be very, very afraid.

Ellen said...

Lol! That's gotta be it, Rob.

Here's another funny thing. I actually just had a visitor who found my blog by googling for perverted amputee sites! Poor guy must have been so disappointed.