Tag Archives: search

Traffic Spike & Comic-Con Pile-Up

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Kelson
  • 6 years ago I titled a blog post “Offensive Driving.” It’s getting a traffic spike from people searching for a particular “handbook.” # Blame Balloon Boy.
  • Crazy: 4-day tickets for Comic-Con International 2010 – NEXT JULY – are 70% sold out. #

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The Thirteenth

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Kelson
  • It’s not off to a great start, but heres hoping today is less frustrating than yesterday. #
  • Was hoping for more than 30% chance of rain, esp. the way TV news was going on last night w/LIVE DOPPLER 2000! Where’s that “Weird Al” Yankovic vid? #
  • Appropriate. Today’s Word of the Day is triskaidekaphobia. #
  • Slowest Patch Tuesday update ever. Of course that’s partly because Norton decided to run a full scan DURING the update. #
  • Patches did eventually finish, but it took >1.5 hours to install them. Usually if I start it before lunch, it’s done when I get back. #
  • Someone searching for “old photos of shoreline village long beach” hit this photo…taken last week. Oops. #

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Tax Dancer

Posted on January 19, 2009 by Kelson

Amusing: Someone hit this post after searching for “dancing tax preparer.” Is it really that common? #

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Not so Random

Posted on January 8, 2008 by Kelson

I wanted to take a look at Firefox’s error page a few minutes ago, so I selected the address bar and hit some random keys. Due to a lack of sleep last night and a day of caffeine, I’d forgotten that if it can’t find a site with a given hostname (and still can’t find one through auto-complete), it automatically does a search for whatever you typed in.

I was rather surprised to see that a search for “klasjdf” turned up 508 hits.

As I think about it, it makes sense. Those letters are 7 of the 8 home keys on the QWERTY keyboard layout, and the eighth is not only a semi-colon, but home to a pinky. A touch typist hitting random keys might be inclined to just hit the ones that are already under his or her fingers. One per finger, leaving out the single non-letter, gets you exactly the 7 that I typed.

As for the letter order, I spot-checked a few permutations, the lowest of which was just 251 for klasdfj. Those with patterns scored higher: 18,400 for alskdjf (alternating left & right, working in from the edges to the center); 99,600 for asdfjkl (left-to-right).

I guess there must just be a lot of people typing random text. Infinite monkeying around, so to speak.

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Still Searching Strangely

Posted on November 25, 2007 by Kelson

Some interesting/odd searches that have landed people on this site lately:

  • “beowulf godzilla” — I still get a kick out of the fact that a Beowulf movie opened at #1. This landed, appropriately enough, on “Beowulf vs. Godsylla”, Tom Weller’s parody from the (sadly out of print) Cvltvre Made Stvpid. The fake-old-English parody is so good that it gets used in college courses on Old English. As my professor pointed out, the short poem uses the proper four-stress alliterative form, and even (mis)uses classic phrases like ice-cold.
  • “scary pitchers” is still going strong, though these days it hits a previous strange-search post rather than the original pun.
  • Flash #219 Cover“wonder woman tied up,” “wonder woman hentai,” “wonder woman humiliated,” “wonder woman captured” etc. have been showing up with disturbing frequency since I posted Victimized Hero. Of course, that’s mostly about the Flash, but the cover with the Flash and Wonder Woman tied up (immortalized in San Diego as the “Wonder Woman/Flash bondage poster” above the DC booth) has somehow ended up in the first two pages of image searches on Google. Admittedly, WW has a long history of bondage subtext, but it’s still kind of disturbing. Especially when it leads to…
  • “cheerleader tied up” — We’ve been getting a lot of hits from searches for Claire Bennet lately, mostly hitting the spot the cheerleader post. This seems to have started crossing over with the WW trends, along with people searching for “clare bennett naked”.
  • “JMS Babylong 5 arc” — honest, it wasn’t that long! Okay, the first half of Season 5 may have seemed like it…
  • “My child has more honor than your child” — somehow our crappy little cell-phone picture of this Klingon bumper sticker has become #1 on a Google search for the phrase.
  • “ANITA COMIC” — I need one too. If you have one of these books and are willing to sell, please let me know! (I assume this person was looking for info on the Anita Blake comic books.)
  • We’re seeing lots of phrases that are clearly copied out of advance fee fraud messages. The comment thread on my fake UK artists post has turned into an informal clearing-house of people posting their experiences with this type of scam.
  • “cheese” — I’m a bit confused by this one, but it seems to have hit the cheese information center.
  • “need coffee” — yeah, it’s getting kind of late. Though unless you’re planning to order coffee beans or grounds for future use, I’d recommend stepping away from the computer and turning on your coffee maker. Or walking across the street to the nearest Starbucks. (You know you need coffee when…)

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What people look for

Posted on March 3, 2007 by Kelson

It’s always interesting to see what people are searching for when they find this site. It’s even more interesting to look at the bottom of the list, the long tail full of one-off searches, some of which… can be really strange.

  • “what to do with tumbleweeds” — Hmm. Mash ’em, boil ’em, put ’em in a stew. Probably hit one of these.
  • “starbucks receipt fraud sandiego” — Now I’m curious. Unfortunately the search results seem to be mostly keyword farms (Only in San Diego)
  • “slave girls photos” and variations — I was lazy enough to use Google to pull up the two cosplay photos that tripped this one, and discovered a site called Leia’s Metal Bikini. Proving once again that there’s an interest group for everything on the Internet.
  • “can i get some free verse poems” — I’m not sure whether they wanted to get some poems, or read poems about people who want to get some.
  • “is raven real?” — :roll: No, and she wasn’t two years ago either.
  • “what is avocados number” — The number of particles in a guaca-mole, of course.
  • “mopee stories” — Thankfully, these have been removed from continuity.
  • “hyena pitchers” and “pitchers of the hyena” — These are a mash-up of two hits from the last time I posted on this subject. Oddly, the only other instance of the word “hyena” on this domain isn’t there anymore.
  • “free verse poems about me” – Wow… I guess that article on self-esteem programs raising a generation of narcissists was right!
  • “hentai raven starfire teen titans” — You people scare me.
  • “where can i find free video for bare feet” — Um…. okaaayy.
  • “toe orgasm” — :shock: … I really don’t want to know.
  • “diy laptop battery” — Because nothing saves money like putting a homemade acid bath inside your computer.
  • “herakles pumpkin” — :-? This could only pull up an archive page with unrelated posts.
  • “hot dogs logos” — They probably weren’t looking for the flying hot dogs Flash logo.
  • “do not play these songs at a wedding” — :D good idea.
  • “evil comics csa com” — well, there’s a Crime Syndicate of Amerika, but I didn’t realize they put out evil comics.

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Feeds in Google results?

Posted on January 7, 2007 by Kelson

Does anyone know how to convince Google to prefer an HTML page over an RSS feed when serving standard search results?

With the demise of the Jamie Jack and Stench show, Another One Bites the Dust has shot back up to the top 5 pages on the site. It turns out it’s the #7 hit on Google for “jamie jack and stench.” Oddly, the comments feed for Alternative to Music? is #8. Not the post itself, which includes all the same comments, but the feed.

I don’t want to keep the feeds out of Google’s index — if someone’s looking for feeds, and mine happen to be relevant, I want them to show up. But if someone’s looking for web pages, shouldn’t Google bring up the web page with substantially similar content in favor of the feed?

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This isn’t going to last long

Posted on December 21, 2006 by Kelson

Google: Your search - 'Deathly Hallows' did not match any documents

Did a Google search just for the heck of it. I wonder how quickly those numbers will climb…

Posted in Harry Potter | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

A9 and the demise of SiteInfo?

Posted on October 13, 2006 by Kelson

Amazon.com’s search site, A9, has scaled back drastically. The rewards program is gone, as are bookmarks and history. They’ve even discontinued the A9 toolbar.

This of course brings up questions about some of the site integration technologies that they developed. OpenSearch has already taken on a life of its own, and in fact the new A9 seems to be mostly an OpenSearch aggregator. But what of SiteInfo? Continue reading →

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Strange Searches

Posted on October 16, 2004 by Kelson

Some odd searches through which people have found this site over the last two weeks:

  • “vice presidential debate drinking game” somehow hit Fallacious Arguments, despite the fact that the post never mentions a drinking game.
  • “breakdown girl” hit Donna Troy via Yahoo images search. Somehow it seems appropriate.
  • “folsom street fair 2004 pictures” and similar phrases directed several people to Living in Middle Earth, though I can’t imagine why.
  • “sugar packet” — I think someone was looking for real sugar (image search again).
  • “rhyming poems by katherine foreman” hit (big surprise) Katie’s Rhyming Poems. (What’s it like to be famous?)
  • “space pirate amazon ninja catgirl” sounds ridiculous, wich is exactly why I posted about the game
  • “jesse quick in love” actually hit the speed force and Jesse’s mother, but not Jesse Quick herself.
  • “how to steal flash” brings up the Flash Museum. I have to wonder what they were actually looking for, though.
  • “xxx hermione” and similar (some of them rather explicit) — WTF? These hit Harry Potter Titles I’d Like To See.

Unfortunately there are too many phrases for the stats program I use to show anything that hit less than twice — and that’s where the really odd ones to show up! I’ve skimmed the logs a bit, and some of the choice items include: Continue reading →

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