How people search: Interesting Searches on Donutey
I can see what people searched for to arrive at my site with a program called Awstats. It has been useful, showing me which pages are searched most often, and what
keywords people use when searching for my site. However, sometimes you just have to wonder what people were thinking when they typed some of this stuff in.
Below are the best of the bunch, with short explanations to go along with them.
grid-computing | globus | high-performance-computing | linux cluster -travel or -golan or -hotel
I wasn't sure, at first, whether this search was made by a person, or some sort of alien computer thing. However, after a search on Google
I found how-to guides on building Linux clusters. When you've negated "travel" "golan" and "hotel" I don't think they were finding what they wanted
to. I believe, but could not confirm, the person found a Blog post of mine about Beowulf clusters.
lesbian forces invaded
This one may seem very odd, but I managed to find the page on my site they were looking at. It turned out to be the following Daily Fool:
ON TRY IT AGAIN
Today Lesbian forces invaded . . . no, sorry, that should be Lesbianese.
TV newscaster during a news report in the UK, on a Lebanese conflict
how to tell if your cell phone got wet and how to tell if a cell phone battery has gotten wet
*Sigh*... I'm not going to go into this, but they obviously found my Revive a Wet Cell guide.
i dropped phone in water, i got my cell phone wet, i got phone wet and need to fix it
These people were the responsible bunch; it wasn't just "my cell phone got wet", as if the thing drowned itself. These upstanding citizens stood up and took responsibility for their
lack of judgment, although I would have been a tad bit more discreet. (Not that I can talk, having done it twice.)
complaint letter classic best
Search engines sometimes get it wrong... this person ended up on the Daily Fool page because of a combination of a joke about
Gillette razors, and George Orwell's "Animal Farm" rejection notice.
myspace insert a link in html language
I suppose you have to start somewhere... but I still dislike all of the "MySpace" references people put in their searches, as if configuring a webpage is
different on MySpace than on the rest of the web.
food poisoning buffalo wild wings
Yes, I think I did get food poisoning there. No, there's not a whole lot a Google search can do for you...
name something people take with them to the beach turkey, daily mail elton john going bald, betsy wurm
All the interesting searches seem to go the the Daily Fool page. I'm not sure what these people were getting at, but
I think we can all safetly assume they were very bored at the time.
Conclusion
Not all of the searches looked like this of course; most of them were perfectly reasonable. However, you do have to wonder sometimes what people were thinking, or rather
what the search engine was thinking... happy searching.
Kevin C. July 23rd 2006 kcas88@gmail.com
『I know of only one bird - the parrot - that talks; and it can't fly very high.』 - Wilbur Wright, declining to make a speech in 1908
