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.

• “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.
• “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…)

• “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?” — 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” — … 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” — good idea.
• “evil comics csa com” — well, there’s a Crime Syndicate of Amerika, but I didn’t realize they put out evil comics.

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?

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

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?

SiteInfo was a scheme for a website to provide a drop-down menu for site navigation. The menu could be hierarchical, and could make use of user-entered search phrases. The website owner would create an XML file, siteinfo.xml, and place it in the site root. The client software would then request this file to populate the WebMenu, which would appear somewhere in the browser.

It’s not clear how useful this is. In some ways, it’s like the navigation toolbars some browsers* will build from <link> elements in a page’s header. A nifty idea, but it largely duplicates navigation that’s already on the page. (That said, <link> elements provide useful clues for bots, prefetching, fast forward and other automated tasks.)

I’d set one up for the Alternative Browser Alliance a few months ago, since it was a small site and easy to build the file, but never got around to figuring out what I’d put in a menu for this site.

As far as I know, only the A9 toolbar and the A9 SiteInfo extension for Firefox will actually check for this file.** There doesn’t seem to be anything preventing other toolbars or browsers from making use of the data, it just doesn’t seem to have caught on.

So it looks like SiteInfo is down to one unmaintained extension for one browser. Its future looks bleak.

*Opera: View » Toolbars » Navigation Bar.
In SeaMonkey: View » Show/Hide » Site Navigation Bar.

**Possibly to avoid a repeat of the favicon.ico fiasco, the toolbar routed requests through a caching proxy to limit duplicate requests. Any privacy issues were outweighed by the fact that A9 already kept a record of your browsing history—and it was a selling point! The SiteInfo Extension makes requests directly.

• “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:

• “how do i become a demon” (Speed Demon) No clue, but if you ever find out, don’t come looking for me to tell me how!
• “dead skater costume” hit Golden Glider, who was a skater, wore a costume, and is dead.
• “pick up line poems” (9-line poems) Hey, babe, wanna come over to my place and check out my poetry collection? Yeah, right.
• “bacardi computer networks” (Computer names)
• “why is volume cubed andrea is squared” I don’t think that’s quite what they meant…
• “how to send someone a virus” Nice one. Although as I understand it, if you use Windows, IE, and never install updates, all you need to do is turn on your computer.
• “3d space amazons” – sounds intriguing. I wonder if they like iced mochas too?
• “microbrew katie” – That would be the Nutty Brewnette, right?
• “is the philosophy of time travel a real book” Nope. Sorry.
• “farscape is zahn going to come back” – No, Tim Zahn has never written anything for Farscape, just original work and Star Wars nov— oh, you mean Zhaan! No.
• “scary pitchers of eyes” – As Katie said, a pitcher of eyes would definitely be scary.
• “patricia spork” somehow landed someone on Earthsea. I have no idea.
• “good songs to play at a wedding” ironically hit Songs not to play at a wedding.
• “secret service, lingerie” – what more need be said?
• “doctor zoom comics” – No, it’s Professor Zoom, and Doctor Doom!
• “how can i make raven in teen titans real?” – Okaaay. Please, turn off your TV, put away the comics, and go outside. Look around. Now to to some goth club and pick up on someone who is real. *Sheesh*
• “is teen titans raven real” – This guy should hang out with the last one. Maybe they can discuss the philosophy of time travel.
• “‘i messed with texas’ shirt” – Texas liked it.
• “teen titans – (bunny raven)” – I don’t get it. Bunny? Update: apparently “Bunny Raven” is the title of an episode.
• “cryogenics hyena” – Tough Day in the Cryogenics Lab [edit: this was on the Litguild Archive]
• “were can i go to become a licensed bounty hunter?” Dunno. Try asking the demon guy.
• “farscape claudia black fake” – No, the genuine article. Of course somehow, I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for…
• “harry potter temple of doom” – as I’ve said before, I’d like to see this.
• “farscape miniseries plot” – Have some patience! It’ll be out any day now! (Tomorrow, actually)
• “farscape peacekeeper wars script” – Oh, come on!
• “download mp3 yogurt fage” – OK, I understand the search for Fage yogurt, but what’s the MP3 got to do with it?
• “shadows not working with mozilla” – Naturally, they’re working with Microsoft!