I've been doing occasional posts on interesting Google terms people use to get here and how successful their searches have been. This time I've grouped the searches based on how close I think they got to what they were looking for.
There have been a number of people searching variations on those words. I thought it was interesting that domain name of the searcher was: US Dept of Treasury
the soor mulk cairt - I had to look this one up myself; I didn't remember putting it in a post. And I didn't. This phrase was in a comment made by Scotsman Mirksome Bogle on a August 2007 post. He has such a knack for catching the actual sounds. tutsiroll tamarind - I described tamarind as having a color and texture a little like a tootsie roll and Google figured this out despite the unique spelling of tootsie roll.
lec aphorisms - This went to my post on famous people born in 1909 which included a short bio of Stanislaw Lec which included some of his aphorisms such as these:
Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand.
In the beginning there was the Word -- at the end just the Cliché.
Many who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lamppost. Burning stakes do not lighten the darkness.
hoover women agents - Got to my post on women in the fbi. I'd say this one was a direct hit. And it's a pretty good post too. Talks about the first women agents - a few before Hoover who left within a year of his becoming the head of the FBI. And how the next ones got in after he died.
high wire michael fajans - Bullseye again. High Wire is a series of paintings of a magician by artist Fajans at the Seattle Airport. I put the whole set of pictures into a video for the blog. If this person wanted to see those pictures, he got exactly what he wanted and there doesn't seem to be anything else posted with all the pictures. If she wanted some history about the paintings, then this is not a bullseye. But because of the query, I've added two brief descriptions of the paintings to the post. I also learned, much to my dismay, that Fajans died in 2006, in a motorcycle accident in Seattle.
high school geography test - This query came from New Jersey and got exactly what was requested - some of Ropi's high school geography test questions in Budapest. It's not as bizarre as it sounds since the test was in English. There was even a link to the whole test.
prison talk i will self surrender to the us marshalls - Got to a post about Vic Kohring self surrendering. Was it helpful? Not sure what the viewer wanted so I can't tell.
Chanot Thailand - My post on Chanot Chumchon. is about a type of chanot, but should get the person a bit closer to what they were looking for. A chanot is a deed for property and Chanot Chumchon is a community deed for property. This one took some things from the internet, but then a fair bit of questioning of my colleagues at the office in Thailand to put together.
On the paper, but no Cigar:
what to avoid with cracked ribs got one of my reports on my son's broken ribs after he was hit by a car, but I don't think he quite got what he was after.
Missed the Target
They did get a word, but not what they wanted.
onunwor pronunciation - (from Columbus, Ohio) here's the google summary the person got:
What Do I know?: February 2008 ... Gray of bribing then-East Cleveland mayor Emmanuel Onunwor involving a no-bid, ...... The pronunciation is easy to remember - “In Sea”) Land Reform ... www.whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html
It's got onunwor and pronunciation. But this is one of those situations where the two words come from two totally unrelated posts. When you click, you get a long page of February 2008 posts which includes the first post listed about the Cleveland Mayor. But not the second one. My post does NOT help the reader figure out how to pronounce Onunwor's name.
"what does not guilty mean?" speeding - The google result only had two entries! A main and a secondary reference to this blog. Pretty amazing that they could find only one website with “what does not guilty mean?” and a variant of ‘speeding’. Why didn’t it offer pages without the ‘speeding’ variant? Anyway the person got two posts on the Kohring trial. The first one didn’t have the phrase in it. The second post - Kohring Day 7 - had Kohring’s attorney’s closing argument which included the sentence, “What does not guilty mean?” It also had, later on, the word speed: “He was a frequent flyer with Joyce Anderson. Should have had her on speed dial.”
celticdiva everquest - Here's a Google problem. I have celticdiva on probably all my posts, because it's one of the Alaska blogs I link to. So if someone puts that in with something else, they'll score both. And I have a post which mentions everquest - it was a post noting the passing of Gary Gycax, the inventor of Dungeons and Dragons.
are bugs a problem going up to alaska in july? - You know how Google sometimes asks, "Did you mean: XYZ?" Well they did this time too:
Did you mean: are drugs a problem going up to alaska in july?
Google, are you making jokes about the quality of Alaska dope in July? Coming up as number 2 out of 643,000 hits is my post “Catching Up - Thai Bugs”. While the word Alaska appears on the blog itself, it is not in the post. I can’t believe there aren’t posts on Alaska bugs in July that shouldn’t have been better matches.
Watching how people get to this site offers an interesting view of how people search Google (and other search engines) and how Google handles them. Some of the more recent ones are below. For previous posts on google searches click here.
the millions sank awestruck in the dust -This person got to Susan and William Goldenberg Make Stunning Music a brother and sister team who had reminded me of another couple making music together in Richard Musil's The Man Without Characteristics. So I had a paragraph from the book that began with "The millions sank, as Nietzsche describes it, awestruck in the dust." I'd say this person found what they were looking for.
pennsylvania had to endora, sorry, endure this lady in 1972 - Who says civility is dead? This searcher (why do I think it's a woman?) even apologized to Google and corrected herself. I have no idea if she found the scurge of Pennsylvania. She got to Famous People Born in 1908, so maybe.
half moon bay beach - I've gotten this a couple of times recently. I have pictures of Half Moon Bay beach on this post and this one in moonlight. But they get sent, instead, to this post of Venice Beach, which does mention Half Moon Bay. Google, why isn't there an easy way for me to tell you that you sent them to the wrong page? I've since linked from the Venice post back to the actual Half Moon Bay beach posts.
aiff 2010 film festival scam? - Google, sometimes you exasperate me. I have posts about the aiff film festival scam. More than one. With scam in the title. And usually you send people to a film festival post that at least mentions 'scam.' But this poor reader was sent to a post of AIFF 2010 Features in Competition which doesn't mention or link to a post with the the scam aspects. Why? BTW, The Anchorage International Film Festival is legit, and weird and cool, but not the other AIFF which has changed its name to AIFA.
clearing customs in anchorage alaska flying from lower 48 - The same way you clear customs flying from New York to LA. Oh dear. There are still people who don't know that Alaska is in the United States. On the other hand, when traveling overseas where Americans aren't too popular, we can say we're Alaskans and we're always welcome. They got Flying to Light - From Seattle to Anchorage. That said, you can go through customs in Anchorage if you are flying from overseas, but not from the Lower 48.
morning discovery i shouldn't be alive - Now, that, with a little editing, would be a great first line for a novel, or at least a short story. This searcher from India (using a computer set on US English) got to this photo of sunset on Chester Creek in an archive that included an energy conference and Bridgman/Packer.
what does poop look like in litter box - This isn't as dumb a question as it might appear. They got to my post kitty litter technology, who knew? which included pictures of what I figured out, eventually, were clumps of cat piss, not poop.
money for being born in alaska- Let's get this clear. There isn't money for being born in Alaska. There is money - Alaska Permanent Fund Dividends - for people who live in Alaska and intend to stay indefinitely (ie - have no plans on moving away.) The person got to a previous Google searches post where I'd highlighted someone asking a similar question, and then linked to Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend Application Time.
where's mane on the map - I'm sorry, I can't resist. (click to make the image clearer) Strangely, the searcher got a map of Africa. I've noticed, as a searcher, that Google gives you lots of choices of images, so I assume people might check out something different from what they were looking for. Is that serendipity or Attention Deficit Disorder?
hulling rice in a thai village - Usually Google does a pretty good job, as it did here. This searcher got to pictures of an old and a newer rice huller in this post (Sustainable Farming The Old Fashioned Way - Karen Village) at a Thai village.
how to wash a white rooster - No laundering instructions, but this person got to a post called Swinging Bulbul and White Rooster. There's a video of the bulbul swinging in the tree outside our Chiang Mai apartment window in 2008 and a photo of a white rooster I passed daily on my ride to work.
swoop me up 1. requesting someone to pick you up in their car. "Swoop me up for school in the morning."
The Urban Dictionary in its definition for the verb 'to ninja' echoes the first definition:
14. v. the act of stealing, swooping, or snaking something. usually the person who has been ninja'd upon does not realize it for a little while, and then they are mad when they find out that something of theirs has been ninja'd.
Hey man you ninja'd my chair. Why the hell did you ninja my book, Jordan?
Does this answer the question?
I've never thought about it before, and I'll check, but I'm guessing the reason there are no capital letters or question marks is that Sitemeter simplifies things. Sitemeter is how I see all these search terms and much more. You can see what Sitemeter tells me at the Sitemeter link in the right hand column below "Blogs of Friends and Acquaintences." Click on the number. Because I believe in transparency, I've left the data available to anyone.
Enjoy your day and reflect on how you phrase your searches and what you get.
I started doing these posts to highlight unusual search terms that got someone to this blog. This evolved into an assessment of how well Google directed someone based on the search terms, but it still has a mix of the two.
Here are two new insights I've gleaned about google search seems to work that I've gotten from this month.
1. Google takes all the terms on 'one page.' On a blog that will depend on how the blogger has set the pages. In my case, a 'page' is a month unless the month has too many posts and runs out of space. I'm assuming this because Google finds terms from unrelated posts and either picks one post to send the searcher to, or the whole page. You can see some examples below where I show what the Google search page showed the searcher.
2. Image searches look at the words in the post as well as the tags on the image. Sometimes this works well, sometimes not.
3. Google is pretty good at figuring out mispellings.
Bulls-eye karen language hello - This person didn't just get the words for hello in Karen written phonetically, this person got a video tape of a Karen villager in Northern Thailand teaching me how to say hello in Karen. I'd call that a bulls-eye. Now, whether the dialect of Karen spoken in Texas is the same dialect, I can't say.
michael palin book apple seed potato - got to a post on Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire. which discusses apples, seeds, and potatoes. I'm impressed how Google can sort through mispellings. Pollan is not related to Palin.
botany of desire - One of the interesting parts of following google hits, is getting a sense that something is happening related to one of the items on your blog. I started getting an increasing number of hits for Botany of Desire as publicity came out about the television show based on the book.
why are professional baseball diamonds different sizes - this person got to a post "Why are baseball diamonds different sizes?" and then to the link to the NPR interview that answered the question. I'd forgotten all about this post. I had to go check the answer too.
grilled sticky rice - And they got a picture of grilled sticky rice in the banana leaf wrapper and a loose recipe as related by the Chiang Mai shopowner.
mountain ask leaf - I'll give Google a bullseye for this one. I'm assuming that the searcher mistyped and so did Google, giving him a picture of mountain ash leaves.
Close Do spittle bugs have teeth - They got to this post on spittle bugs which shows the spittle, but doesn't discuss teeth.
classical music effects on ice crystals - This was an image search and they got a picture of ice crystals on our storm door at -10˚F (-23˚C). But no music.
used italian ice machine - got to picture of an old Thai ice scraping machine in a post from Chiang Mai. Who knows? Maybe it originally came from Italy.
can't seem to wake up at amrit vela - I can't seem to wake up at the Eiffel Tower in the morning. Sometimes these searches leave me scratching my head only to find I do have something on this that I've totally forgotten. This got to a post on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India where you can find out what amrit vela means. It does make sense after all. Well, actually, instead of giving the specific post, Google gave the whole archive page for October 2006. Again, some of the words come from other posts. So you have to scroll down to Oct. 25. red & yellow flower pointed upwards indoor plants long stem -got to this picture of a red flower on the trail to Doi Suthep in Chiang Mai, Thailand. BTW, Doi means mountain, Suthep is a type of angel.
snow leopard update blank screen - I got a lot of these, more for 'black' screen. With good reason. I have several posts on my snow leopard problem. Google first took most people to a post I wrote before I had the solution. When I saw this, I did put links in all the posts about the black screen to get them to the cure post. And only some people took that link. By October 10, it seemed that most of these were being sent to the post with the 'cure' at the end of the title. So Google can learn. The number of these searches also confirms that this is inherent in Snow Leopard.
A Stretch - nice green birds for cage - This was a person from Canada. I can understand wanting to have a nice green bird around, but the idea of putting a bird into a cage for one's entertainment is a little disturbing. I recognize there's a difference between capturing a wild bird and putting it into a cage and getting one born in captivity. But people raise birds to sell only because there are people who want to put them in cages. This person got to a picture of picture of a bird of paradise in the Bird Park in Singapore. It's a very big cage and you can barely see the bird for all the greenery, but it's still in a cage. Sort of like being under house arrest.
kenny g is a jehovahs witness - Well, I have posts on Jehovah's witnesses and I have a post on Pat Metheny writing about Kenny G. But nothing that combines the two. There was a surprisingly large number of people googling Pat Metheny on Kenny G.
apple genius josh at apple store santa monica fired - Well, I did go to the Apple Store in Santa Monica and I did spend time at the genius bar, but I don't recall anyone named Josh. Google found all the words in scattered over four posts. The searcher simply got to my blog - not even a specific post.
parking garages hidden inside mountains pictures - This Austrian searcher got a picture of a parking garage in LA, not at all hidden in a mountain. It was way down on the page they got, but since it was an image search, they did get to choose from a page full of pictures.
famous people who were born in dangerous places - Don't know how helpful this was, but it was an interesting search. They got to Famous People Born in 1909.
what ethical obligations do you personally feel towards wolves and whales - Got to a post about an article written about Wales, Alaska. It talked about ethical obligations urban Alaskans have to understanding the history of rural Alaska among other things.
Probably Not Google's Fault
Sometimes searchers give Google a real challenge. What did these people want?
how to make the constitution 1500 papers in photoshop - Who knows what this person was after? Not me. Their search got several posts mashed into one and it linked them to one on a post where I photoshopped a picture I took while cross country skiing. But I put the blame here on the person searching - what was he looking for?
what can i grow that isn't agapanthus - lot's of things I'd venture. Can't blame Google for sending this to a post that mentions agapanthus. This is someone who needs to think about her search terms more carefully.
thyland people are eatting abortion child flash is it true - this query came from someone in India who got to a post on the ethics of publishing photos of children. Google combined Children, people's, flash, eating from several different places on the blog.
photo gull light cloudy sky new york city airport - Was this person looking for a specific picture or a picture with all those things? Since this was an image search the searcher presumably got lots of pictures to look at. But this one had no gull, was not New York City or even an airport. But It did have clouds and blue sky. The post it was in mentioned the Santa Monica Airport. I've started to notice - now that I can usually see the image search terms - that Google considers not only the terms in the photo file name, but also terms in the post as well.
does human nature exists in everyone - Now this is an interesting question. I've never directly addressed this question, but the searcher got directed to the post on why everyone should study philosophy.
last year when it snowed for eight days complete sentence? - Not completely sure what the searcher wanted. Whether his words were a complete sentence? I'm guessing it was a school assignment and he had to complete the sentence. The google hit combined several posts and had the word snow. The post was about the president-elect breaking with tradition by using complete sentences when he talked.
You Missed This One Google
Most of these are Google trying too hard to come up with something. Google has trouble saying, "I can't find anything" and maybe that's ok. People find things they didn't know they were looking for.
mango 21 44000 - There's 44,000 in one post. mango in another. And 21 in the google search information. But I don't think this was what the German searcher was looking for.
13 Sep 2008 ... That would be like having 44000 people rally in New York City, 20800 in LA, or 15350 in Chicago. ... I can see the mangoand sticky rice, but I can't reach it. But I'll learn. .....21 hours ago ... www.whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/.../44000-nye-at-alaska-women-against- palin.html - Im Cache - Ähnlich
wat do they mean when they say the the duty of the beast in flesh by a split second - Maybe I should have a category of "Searcher goofed." Google found some posts that had some of words. But they weren't all one posts and ultimately I doubt they answered whatever question the searcher had. Here's what Google gave him that got him to this blog:
Jan 5, 2008 ... Yes, despite the flesh in the ADN promo article, it's fine for kids ...... 666, the Antichrist and the Mark of the Beast Who is the Antichrist .... Whatever they say is calculated. Truth is a strategic choice, ..... Just because one has the legal right to do something doesn't mean they should do it. ... whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html - Cached - Similar -
I'm surprised they didn't find 'wat' too.
Should Google have some sort of minimum standard of words being together in a single post? While the bots can find the words really fast, it seems it still takes a human to say, "This is gibberish."
Or is this some sort of internet beach combing and people are just curious about what they might find? The collection of posts Google offered are all from one archived month. I think this is what I've seen before for what seems like random words collected from different posts. If that's accurate, then they have limited the searches to some identified 'page'. Thus they found a single 'page' that had the most words on it, though for a blog that means lots of generally unrelated posts. Perhaps it would be more meaningful on a regular website page. Perhaps they should have a filter for blogs.
what does moosegoose look like - Let me know if you find out. Google gave them a post titled "Moose, Goose Lake, UAA Science Building" I got another one about moosegoose as October ended.
molar tooth - The searcher got a picture (this was image search) of growing tamarind from seed. But it tells us a bit about how the image search works. In the text I mention that the seeds are about the size of a molar tooth. So Google is checking out the words in the text around the picture. This one clearly missed completely.
Does Google have a Sense of Humor?
money saving shopkeeper expert - This image search got to a picture labeled "Buddha Image Shopkeeper Chiang Mai." The picture is of a shop that sells Buddha Images.
It's been a while. Here are some more interesting search terms people used to get here.
samsui women - Google really screws up here. I posted about a movie called Samsui Women - who had been brought to Singapore to do manual labor. This searcher was in Singapore. But Google took the searcher to a post on Ukrainian women.
"my year in germany " - How did this one (from Karlsruhe, Germany) get to "How To Pronounce Kalenchoe?" I checked. The comments on this post got into correct and incorrect pronunciation and grammar in general. And in my response, I wrote, "My year in Germany taught me things like why it's "I" or "me" in different cases. But years of teaching also taught me that the actual content is more important than fussing over minor typos. . ."
number of people that had a watch in 1910 - interesting question that wasn't answered here. Searcher got to famous people born in 1910.
how move on from ipv "intimate partner violence" and meet new guy - I hope she got some help from the post on a ipv prevention meeting. Good luck!
how much pfd fund a month i'll get in alaska - this came from someone in New Haven, Connecticut. Was the person thinking the oil money dividend we all get each year was worth moving to Alaska for? He got a page from last year at application time on the Fund . Remember, we all live in igloos, use dog sleds, it's dark all winter, and the one day of summer each year, we get devoured by giant mosquitoes.
those nights when you can't sleep,it might be bacause you're awake in someone else's dream film - Wow, that's an interesting thought! Google guided this Russian image browser to this shot from a post on the movie Inception. Which is relevant to being in other people's dreams.
how do they get the wires across mountains - This searcher got to a post entitled Man on Wire Raises Interesting Questions - about the movie on the man who walked from one of the World Trade Center towers to the other on a wire. They got the wire across to the other building with a bow and arrow, but I don't think they get them across mountains that way.
set up educatoin inside of ten states of south sudanese, then foreigners countries you could think off,or forget it. - A lot of Google searches sound a lot like classroom assignments. This one was a Yahoo search from Kansas City, MO and I like how he added on a bit of what he thought about this assignment. It didn't say what page he got to here.
did sarah palin and frank prewitt ever work together? - This got to the review on Prewitt's The Last Bridge to Nowhere. I don't recall any stories of them working together.
will my boyfriend in jail know i am corresponding with other inmates on corrlinks - I don't think corrlinks will tell him, but the other inmates might, especially when they want to push his buttons. My post on email for federal prisoners didn't answer this question.
I think one could write a book of short stories just by creating a back story of google search terms.
oh my god he killed kenny g pat metheny - I get a fair number of hits on variations of "Pat Metheny on Kenny G" but this is the most extreme to find the posts on this topic.
what famous people were born from illegal parents in american - I'm considering just what 'illegal parents' might mean. They stole the baby? They broke the mommy and daddy laws? Probably the searcher merely meant the parents were criminals. He got famous people born in 1909.
foot bones side bones of the foot foot bones - Suddenly, one day (March 14) I was getting hits with these terms (about a dozen) and going to a post with an xray of my wife's heal fracture. The post has been up almost a year and only today have I noticed people getting there. I googled to see if it had just moved up on google. I went through about ten pages and then switched to google images and still nothing. Then I noticed it didn't say "google." It said "google.ie." That turns out to be google on internet explorer, but when I checked back, I was getting people from google.com as well. But I also found a post at PC world discussing a flaw in google.ie that allows 'politically motivated attacks." It wasn't clear what that meant, but I don't use ie so I'm not worried. Oh, yes, google takes them to "Life's Little Surprises."
After more hits and more exploring, a picture of foot bones I borrowed for that post - and gave credit for - is high on the google image searches. (The first person I noticed had clicked on a picture of my wife's foot xray which I did take myself.)
Mental paradise - I like those two words together. I need to stop and think more about the concept. The searcher found a picture of birds of paradise in the Singapore Bird Park and a page of Singapore posts. But it must have been ok cause she spent 23 minutes here.
syllables in meandering - Never thought about it, but if you read this word, it would be logical to assume it is "méan-der-ing" not what we actually say "me-án-der-ing." Such a good word! This searcher from India got to a page about Charles Dickens praising meandering at the beginning of David Copperfield.
if i give the fbi information does that make me guilty - Some searchers ask questions that make me wish I could call them up and talk to them. There's obviously an interesting story here from this east coast query. I don't think the person got the answer they were searching for in the post about the FBI 'whistle-blower' complaint.
things to hate about rafael nadal - There may be some perfectly good explanation for this search, but on the face of it, I find it troubling. Does one have to go looking for things to hate? The search got to a story on Nadal's coach/uncle.
i know a little bit of this and that blog alaska - I love how the human mind sort of mushes things together and gets close. If we assume that this blogger actually was trying to get here and was trying to remember the name of the blog, then she would have been conflating the title - What Do I Know? - with the tag line in the heading - this and that as things come up. Or maybe that person was looking for something else altogether and google delivered her here.
my aunt's husband died we are estranged what to do - Oh Google, how could you do this? This is where humans beat computer algorithms. First, there's a talent to writing good search terms and this googler is asking a really open ended question. But evil google saw the words "estranged" and "husband" and took this person to a post entitled Woman Bites Off Estranged Husband's Penis. The aunt's husband is dead google, this isn't the answer.
Here are a few terms people used to get to this blog that caught my attention in the last couple of months for one reason or another.
diminutive crony - Is this like a Leprechaun lobbyist? The person got to the post on Cronyism at UAA.
I got enough searches for this that I looked to see why. It was part of clue #2 in the Independence, Kansas Neewholah Medallion scavenger hunt. Here are the clues (regular font) with the answer in the bold font:
SUNDAY:
Allan and Mikael sang in this band,
the song was a big hit. Two singers for the Hollies – “He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother”
Adiminutive crony, they lent him a hand, “He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother”
the first two lines provide the fit. It’s a long road, with many a winding turn.
Diminutive Crony = My Brother? That's a stretch, but it's a great, old song that people should listen to today when so many of our brothers (and sisters) need a little help. So I put it here on top so you can listen while you read the rest of the post.
The medallion was found:
LOCATION: Taped underneath a big green dumpster. Adjacent to the parking lot at the 10th street baseball/softball fields
jesus of course i accept people with pierced bodies cartoon - they got to a photo of the cover of Gary Trudeau's book The Long Road Home. But I want to see the Jesus cartoon.
utozombiesbra - This one got to a post on when the first Permanent Fund Dividend check was due out in 2010. Searching the page found 'uto' in statutory and 'bra' in librarian, but no zombies. The word vampire did appear though.
ant egg oil reviews - I didn't know people were using ant egg oil. For cooking? For driving? This searcher got to the post Catching Up- Thai Bugs, which included a photo of a baggie full of red ant eggs - a delicacy for a Thai friend in Chiangmai.
is there farsi book shop in london - This got to a post from LA which included a visit to a Persian book store.
Popular, conventional wisdom which may be factually right or wrong, but which loses meaning through frequent, often thoughtless repetition
"Tommy never thinks for himself. He just repeats these blurks that he hears all day on CNN and then tries to pass it off as wisdom.
to spew, chuck, or to throw up.
when something is disgusting
Maybe it was just a typo. Maybe someone whose vocabulary includes 'blurk' can clarify.
wooden post old timey pig pen - Not too many people say 'old timey' these days. [Actually, since I wrote this, I've started to notice it again.] It's cool when the kind of word someone uses amplifies the meaning of the word itself. And this searcher got to a post (no pun intended really) with an old wooden pig pen in Thailand.
Someone else 20 minutes later got there with natural pig pen which worked, but just didn't have the same ring.
I've been noticing that sometimes two folks get to the same post, one after the other, seconds apart. Does someone clicking on a link cause Google to push that post higher for the very next person who searches for the same or a similar term? For example: what do i know (from Toronto at 9:26:26am Alaska Time) came right on the heals of explain the quote "what do i know" (from Alexandria, VA at 9:26:25am). But messing up my speculation here (or maybe there's even more going on than I know) the first one came from Bing and the second from Google. This is probably a bad example because the second one got the post with the Victor Lebow quote and the second to the main What Do I Know? page. Or maybe that's evidence that it's just coincidence. But I've been seeing this pattern lately.
braille tatoos - Never thought about this, though I have thought that surgeons should learn how to make artistic stitches so that the scars they leave have a cool design. This searcher got to a post on braille playing cards. I'd also note that tattoo has 3 t's, but bloggers who misspell words pick up readers who misspell them too.
what if i didn't get my alaska permanent fund check yet - This one came October 22 from Las Vegas. The checks were distributed October 6. But the website also says, "Applications in eligible status after September 23 and before October 21 will be distributed October 27." So it may still be coming. But searches like this stir my imagination. How many stories can you create to explain this inquiry? An Alaskan living Outside? Visiting Oustside? Former Alaskan hoping to get one more PFD check? Or a gambling addict waiting for his check? Lots of possibilities.
BTW, the searcher got to a 2010 post on the PFD, not the 2011 post. Neither would have answered the specific question. But this gave me a chance to respond to an overlooked question from Kathy in KY.
how many black us congressmen have been members of the us congress - My snarky answer: All of them. Sorry, I just can't help myself. This is not a biggie, but it shows how people can't quite say what they mean. But Google has a lot of tolerance for such people and this person got to my post on the number of black congress members. Did you want to know about black Congresswomen too?
For those of you who have no idea what I find wrong in the query, leave a comment or email me and I'll explain.
modern office lobbies with taxidermied animals - This was an image search which gave them this picture and highlighted this sentence from the post "Providence Alaska Medical and Animal Park" : "Some places have stuffed moose or bear in the lobby."
This is indeed an office building lobby, but the moose isn't in a glass case. This is Anchorage and the moose is live, outside, browsing the landscaping.
andropi - Do you think they were looking for entropy? In any case the got the post Happy Birthday, Moni, Alex, and Ropi see the andropi?). Probably not what they wanted. It said North America, on a computer using US - English and Linux but in a European time zone. (Yes, Sitemeter tells me all that, and usually the city and country too.) While computer time in Sitemeter is usually a good clue to the visitor's location when location itself is 'unknown', it reflects the timezone set on the computer. So, when I'm traveling, my computer still reflects Alaska time.
what is the name of the flower you blow on it and everything little whote thing come out when you make a wish - Google got this person to an archive page. If the searcher scrolled down long enough, she would have gotten a picture of a dandelion flower gone to seed and an explanation about making wishes. Not bad Google. But why didn't you just take the person straight to the dandelion post instead of the whole archive page?
owl to put in tower - What does this mean? Is this some sort of Harry Potter reference? This person got to this picture of a great horned owl up close at the July 4th celebration on the park strip post. There was also a climbing tower in the post.
frank "the tank" sullivan has acquired 38 plates at the flying saucer - Here's another good example of how one could use Google search terms to write short stories. Clearly there is a story behind this. Google gave him an archive page (August 30, 2011 back to Aug. 17) which includes the words: Frank (Murkowski); tank (underground storage); plates (license); and flying saucer (house). The number 38 is on the page too.
2012 number missouri delegates republican convention - Google got this person into the vicinty, but should have taken him to the exact page. This person got sent to the blog, but not to a specific page. I'd done a post recently on the Republican primaries and the possibility of selecting their candidate at the convention specifically answered this question. I'm not sure if the searcher found it. If he searched 'Missouri' on the page, he should have found it.
That's it for now, for previous such pages click here.
Here's another list of things people googled to get to this blog. Some worked, but a lot of these got here because I just happened to have some of the unusual words or phrases they were looking for, but not the answer they were looking for.
how would i know if someone did voodoo on me? I know this person didn't get the answer to the question. I jokingly had speculated that perhaps someone had done voodoo on me in this post about the how we know what is real, in this case, in the FBI investigation of Alaskan politicians. And tonight I could probably write another chapter given that the attorney general has asked for the release of Kott and Kohring.
ada ohio cemetery in guinness book of world records My post of famous people born in 1909 included a mention of Rollo May and the fact he was born on April 21, 1909, in Ada, Ohio. Probably not what they were searching for.
keyboard problem mac h is 2 j is 4 problem - Not exactly sure what the problem is here. If you hit F6 on my macbook, it changes some of the keys and J=1, K=2, L=3, etc.. Perhaps the searcher had a different Mac where those letters were a little different. In any case, you have to turn off NumLock by hitting F6 again. But that wasn't the answer on my post about my keyboard locking. But maybe the person learned something else useful.
who was the first female fbi agent - Bingo! This person probably got what the desired info on my post of leftover notes on female FBI agents.
do florence reece's artistic accomplishments contradict? - this is one of those bizarre google results where it identifies search words in several unrelated posts. Actually, in this case they are all from one post, but a looong post. The one on Famous People. Here's what they found at google - four of the six words in the search: What Do I know?: Famous People Born in 1909 And I added one person to Brainy's list - Art Tatum. ... With her posthumous works - 16 volumes, edited by André A. Devaux and Florence de Lussy - Weil has earned a reputation as ... Her web presence is full of contradicting stories. ..... when young Rollo (given the name Reece at birth) was still a small child. ...
do the governor of a state have the right to tell a store how much to charge on a certain product if he know that the prices are to high? I didn't answer that question anywhere; this person got the post on Governor Palin and product placement.
how to find ip address for anonymous posts at blogger.com - Well the post google sent them to - figuring out my anonymous blog commenter - doesn't answer the question. On other posts I do show some of the things that my sitemeter tells me about people coming to the site, including ip address.
july date full moon anchorage This one was from Australia. I didn't give out that information. But they did get to see the April full moon at Half Moon Bay.
find birthtown of poet,
author of the temple,
born in 1909
poet born 1909 the temple "poet born 1909 the temple" got to the Famous People Born in 1909 post. But I got curious why so many people were suddenly searching for this and I found a puzzle in the Times. So I did some sleuthing of my own and posted what I found. And that got me nearly 1000 hits over the week of the puzzle.
how many people were born on each date since 1909? I have a few people listed on different dates for 1909, but not all the people.
free cicada piercing sucking mouthparts pictures - I think this picture which I took is better than what they found at cicadas in the background, where there's a picture I found on line. But I'm not sure the "piercing sucking mouthparts" are all that clear in any of the pictures. But the post they got to had audio of cicadas in Thailand.
if the world is what it is because we have created it how do we know whats real - This person got to a post titled "Blogging - What's Real? How Do We Know? Stevens, Kepner, Joy There's a little that addresses the question, but most is about the trials and investigation.
fishing with cormorants japan opium connection? This one came from Singapore and I think what they got was just to the blog, not a particular post. I have no idea why it got here.
i know this boy who talks to me only when he is high - another one that got to the blog, but not a particular post.
blog in general leaking petrol tank emergency fix - Definitely got an answer to the question, my story about how some Ugandan truck drivers used a bar of soap to temporarily fill a hole in the petrol tank. This one came from Sydney, Australia.
pictures/photos from global summit on climate change alaska pictures This one was from Chennai, India and they got to a post with pictures from the indigenous peoples global summit on climate change. But why doesn't Google send them to the label that would give them all of the posts on the summit instead of just one of the posts?
what is the difference between a cyclone and a typo - I love typos like this. I'm pretty sure this searcher from Melbourne, Australia was looking for the difference between cyclones and typhoons. And they got that at this post.
There was a bump in hits to the blog this morning. People were getting here by googling variations of "liz taylor's husbands/children."
(Let's pause a moment in remembrance of this beautiful woman and talented actor whose life was filled with great and not so great moments. Each person is born with different personal characteristics and into different life situations. There are no instruction books for life that fit all those different conditions. The life of a beautiful woman has its own opportunities and hazards. The life of child celebrities has additional perils. Elizabeth Taylor got to meet some of the most interesting people of the 20th Century, and was, perhaps, one of them herself. But that's not, as her life demonstrated, a guarantee of generally sustained personal happiness. Taylor's work for cures for AIDS has made a big contribution as did her excellent acting.)
Back to google's mysterious ways. People are getting to my post on Famous People Born in 1909 which includes a short bio of one of Taylor's husbands, Mike Todd, which includes the line, 'and one of Elizabeth Taylor's husbands.' (The one, I'd note, that seemed like the one that would last, but he died in a plane crash. But a lover who dies in the height of the romance can never do wrong, so who knows?) But could this humble blog's obscure mention of Taylor be snagging google hits for this? I googled to see where What Do I Know? showed up. I gave up after 20 pages of google. I did a google image search and didn't find the Todd picture I have up either.
A second google mystery I've been pondering: Suddenly one day last week I was getting hits on a post about my wife breaking a bone in her foot. People were googling "bones of the foot" or 'foot bones." I tried googling and again couldn't find a google page leading here. But then I noticed these were image searches and there is a picture I found and posted (with attribution) with bones of the foot - in addition to an x-ray of my wife's foot. And that showed up near the top of google images. But why is google sending them to my blog instead of the original site with that picture? I realize this has to do with other factors google uses to rank websites and that blogs that update regularly like this one gain some advantage that way. But what changed last week after 10 months with no hits from people searching for foot bone pictures? It's like all of a sudden the switch was turned on. And it's continued every day since.
These are hits I don't think I really 'deserve.' They are accidents of google algorithms. But then there are hits google botches - getting them to this blog, but not really to the best page here for the search terms.
And since I'm doing this parenthetical blogging post, I'd note that I started a Famous People Born in 1911 post. I have a list of names and started some bios. But each year the internet gives me more 100 year old names than the previous years and my bio research keeps getting more elaborate and it takes more time. And I'm distracted by other topics. But I want to do this one because this year would be my father's 100th birthday. So it might happen.
Once again I post some of the search terms people used and what they got to list some interesting search terms and to see how google works.
Bullseye
santa monica trapeze school - this was an image search that got to a post on the Santa Monica pier with a photo of the trapeze school.
rockin dentist - I actually have a post called 'Rockin Dentist'. I got scheduled once with another dentist in my dentist's office and it turned out he has a second amateur career as a rock guitarist.
how do you get prickly pears outta your skin - I had the answer to that at the bottom of a post on eating prickly pear. (Duct tape)
unfuck the world, the song - This got to an audio clip of the song from Kathryn Blume's play Boycott when she performed it here in Anchorage. But the most interesting part of this was that the computer seeking this came from the World Bank. Does this mean they finally have defined the problem they're working on?
black members of congress - I take a certain amount of pleasure when someone at
the ISP "Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives" comes to a blog in Alaska to get information about Congress.
fruit flies fungus gnats difference - Got to Tiny Black Bugs - Fruit Fly or Fungus Gnat? The visitor, from Boston, probably had fruit flies, because the outclick was to the Oklahoma State University page on fruit flies, not the Colorado link on fungus gnats.
famous people who was born in pansilvania that start with the letter c - First, I need to say this person was from Pennsylvania. Google did manage to get him to the post on famous people born in 1909, and two - David Riesman and Joseph L. Mankiewicz - were born in Pennsylvania, but as you can see there was only one c between them and it wasn't at the beginning.
difference between a clique and a colloquialism - Never thought about a connection between those two words, but I can see how this Dutch searcher might have. Unfortuantely, I don't have anything on that and google sent him to Difference between a Cyclone and a Hurricane. (I probably jumped to the wrong conclusion on the nationality. It was from Holland, but Schiphol, which is the Amsterdam airport and the computer uses US English.)
a yellow egg with a tan spot. the moment you look away from it, it moves to another space - got to a picture of a yellow egg I did in photo shop in class last year..
Not even close.
2.employee bloggers sometimes use pseudonyms. under what conditions might the blogging service be forced to provide the real identity of the blogger?- This one got to a post that at least touches the issues here, The Right to Privacy, Bloggers and Privacy. This post discusses privacy in general and specifically the outing of Alaska's most read blogger at Mudflats. It doesn't quite get into the question sought though.
gender butterfly abdomen - When I stopped to think about it, it seemed to be about how to tell the gender of a butterfly. If it was, it got a pretty picture of a white butterfly with brown markings in the foothills in Northern Thailand, but nothing on determining gender. This one got me wondering. If you're interested, Clay shows how to identify a Monarch's gender when it's still a chrysalis. Dragonfly power gives a more thorough explanation. Scroll down to Part 1.
do flies know when they're full - Interesting query. I'm not even sure where this one landed. I certainly didn't have the answer.
do humans live in alaska - This one came from a computer that is set for Arabic from Jordan. So at least we can say some people in that part of the world are as ignorant of us as we are of them. Google sent them to the post "To Live and Die in Wales Alaska" He did get the answer, that yes we do.
do hipsters go skiing - I wrote about the movie Hipsters and I mention skiing now and then in my posts, but there's nothing that answers the question. Google took them to a post on the Russian movie Hipsters that won the Anchorage International Film Festival Best Feature.
Missed the target even.
if you don't know when you were born how old are you - This is a legitimate question. Got to famous people born in 1909.
racket tailed drongo sound clip - There actually is video with a racket tailed drongo calling, but Google took this person to a post in the same month on Burma and bio fuels policy. If the searcher had been persistent, he might have followed my search instructions in the upper right hand corner. If he had searched for the word drongo on that page he would have found the link to the post with what he was after. But the Sitemeter data suggests that he didn't get to it. He was so close to exactly what he wanted, but Google should have put him on the right page.
how much does it cost to get into amber in nature the mueseum in warsaw??tell me now!!! i need this for homework!!! - Despite the fact that my blog can't even come close to answering the question, What Do I Know came up first out of 1340 hits. Why? Because google uses robots, not people to find the hits. They found a page with enough posts to match six of the words in his search command. (It does sound like some bratty kid doesn't it?) But there are no two words together even. If mine was the number 1 hit, can you imagine how useless the others were? And if there were some that got him to the museum in warsaw, why was mine number 1? Does google think it's better to give lots of wrong answers than to say, "Sorry, we can't find anything useful"? Here's the google link he found:
You can get the whole letter at the Warsaw Gazette.] ...... There's so much to tell...... I don't need to do my homework, the college guys like me just the way I am. ...... Seward Highway that is now a bike trail to Girdwood, I found this nature lesson - on cottonwoods. ...
whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html - Cached -
Google Sense of Humor
politicians laughing - This image search got to a picture of a white crested laughing thrush. Why not? Unfortunately, it wasn't even a good picture.
Where Google does well:
On the paper, but no Cigar:
Missed the Target
