Anyone who reviews their site or blog analytics knows that strange search terms bring people to sites all the time.
Many bloggers write hysterical posts outlining the weirdness of these requests, along with imaginary theories about how they came to be. I love these posts because they are, without fail, hilarious– but part of me is keeping a secret.
See, so often as to be ridiculous, I’m the one who used that search term.
Yep. I looked up “pink unicorn bunco”, “abraham lincoln t-rex dinosaurs”, “naked chicken run accent”, “smoke laptop”, and “british people date mustache woman”.
That was me.
Yes, I was probably searching for you and, yes, I did search for the same thing multiple times.
It worked the first time, didn’t it?
Judge my search engine skills all you want– I found what I was looking for, or someone nearly as awesome. That’s a pretty good day.
So why do I use search engines as if I’m an emotionally-stunted, hyperactive spambot?
Good question!
- You may not have noticed, but the internet is pretty big now. The easiest way to find something is to be specific, or be specific to terms that narrow down your options.
- I can find anything via search engine, due to years of effective researching and the part of my brain that remembers the most unique aspects of you or your posts. It looks weird, but I promise you there is a method to my madness.
- I have the world’s worst memory when it comes to certain things– like blog names. I remember you. I know the names of your kids, and why you don’t play bunco, and what happened that weekend at Tahoe with the unicorn, and how your sister thinks you look best in pink. I don’t remember your URL, though.
- I’m also very bad with the bookmark system. I have about 30,000 bookmarks because everything catches my interest for at least a second. On the internet, I’m like a little bird in a world of tiny foil slivers and worms.
- Regarding the grammar, search engines don’t understand prepositional phrases or past participles, people. I just type in nouns and the bare minimum of other words– even the order of the words has little importance.
- I have a weird sense of humor. Sometimes I’ll be typing, “R2D2 Cupcakes” and suddenly have the need to follow it up with the words, “Made with plastic monkeys”. Then I subject someone, usually Dave, to the wonderful results that brings up.
- You are prioritized by Bing and Google because I have visited you before. So, in the case of R2D2 Cupcakes Made with Plastic Monkeys, no doubt one or two of you would be brought up in the first 15 results. I’d recognize your name and follow the trail of tin foil to your blog, even though part of me knows that you don’t specifically have an answer to my query.
- I forget that people can see search engine results. This is a big one. It wasn’t too long ago that I trolled WordPress blogs searching for the word “naked”. It was important, I promise.
So, that’s my confession for today.
I apologize for any confusion my bizarre searches may have caused you.
- Do you have anything you’d like to confess today?
- Link me to your last search engine query post, I love those things.
- Also, since this narrowly relates to search engines, go to Google.com and type in the word “askew”.
- Did you do my raffle yet? Gosh, y’all, don’t make me nag. There’s 3 points just for being nice. That’s easy. Just tell one of my commentors that they’re awesome. It’s true. They are. http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/5bd9561/