Strange Searches
One of the advantages of using a good hosting service for one’s website is that he can see the search terms that people type into places like Google that get them to the page. Sometimes, they make sense. Sometimes, they make you wonder how the search term got the person to your site. And sometimes, they make you lose faith in humanity, as people search for some very weird stuff. Let’s just have a look at some stats from August 2007:
In total 778 different phrases got people to my website. Given the widget’s popularity, I’m not surprised that the phrase “radar in motion” made up 23.1% of the month’s search keyphrases. That’s pretty typical every month. My Radar In Motion website is the second site that comes up when one searches for the phrase in Google, behind only the Apple website with a link to my website.
The first non-radar keyphrase to get people to my website is “divided clothes.” This one seems to come up ever month for some reason. Is this some kind of clothing company? If so, they need to do a better job, as my site comes up first for this phrase on Google. “New Sevendust” also tends to be a popular phrase. Unfortunately, the weblog entry leading people to my page for this search phrase is over a year old and refers to the band’s previous album.
My philosophical musings get some attention with search phrases like “do people really change?” and “what is an apology?” I can’t claim to be an authority on either topic, so I hope people haven’t used the information on this site for anything important.
I have also been very interested in parasites who steal pictures from other websites and use them as their own without any credit. Some people don’t seem to know what it is (”what is picture stealing”). Some people want to do it (”steal pics from profile”, “steal pictures of peoples websites”). Many people want to stop it like I did (”stop stealing my pics”, “how to stop picture stealing on internet”, and “find out who is stealing your photos”). Others are the parasites I’m talking about (”steal pictures of peoples websites” and “stealing photos from computer”). And others seem to have other intentions (”pictures of people stealing”, “pictures of not stealing”, “men stealing computers pictures”).
I have several song lyrics on my website from bands like lostprophets and Live. It seems the search for the artists of songs based on a line leads some people to my weblog postings: “i have no regrets standing on the rooftops song ,” “i look at my daughters and i believe lyrics.” Of course, this results in slightly misheard lyrics: “this is how we get now everybody scream now,” “standing on the rooftop everybody screams his long out,” “our love is like water beatin down and abused for being strange.” Some people just make mistakes: “our love is like water pearl jam.”
Then there are the search phrases that make me wonder what people were after:
- “pics of chance or kamal”: First prize, lottery ticket; runner-up prize, me!
- “immigrants have freedom of speech means what positive”: I wonder if he did the same thing replacing “positive” with “negative.”
- “request for putting mobile cell on silent mode”: Does it require a call to the cell phone company, perhaps?
- “stories of my death”: They apparently have internet in the afterlife.
- “cartoon video sex ferr”: Umm…..yeah.