Search Terms

I always find it interesting to see how people end up at my weblog. One nice feature of WordPress is that they list the search terms people use to find this site (if those keywords are contained within the URL). Don’t worry: there isn’t any identifying information attached to them. I have no idea if the user using a particular search viewed more than one page, what pages he viewed, where he is located, and so forth. I just get a list of search terms.

Here are some of the more interesting terms people have used to find my weblog:

“polonium humor”

I wonder how they ended up here…I mean, polonium is such a naturally funny topic that there must be an abundance of polonium humor sites…

“message Al Gore is attempting to convey”

I should hope this searcher hasn’t already seen the movie and is still wondering what the message is.

“machines to help infants learn to walk”

Are there such things? I’m not sure what the searcher had in mind, but it’s the kind of thing I might write about.

“dr anderson solved the division of zero”

No he didn’t!

“puddle waking up”

What? I have no idea what the searcher was hoping to find. What would one write about a puddle waking up? And what’s even more mysterious is how this search led him here—I don’t even recall ever writing about puddles, and a search of my own weblog didn’t reveal it.

“how to administer Polonium 210”

Aw, come one now! Who wants to know? I don’t run that kind of place!

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22 thoughts on “Search Terms

  1. I think the “puddle waking up” search was entered by someone who read one of my comments on an earlier post of yours regarding global warming. Sorry, I’m not trying to steal the show, I really think that’s what happened. I was telling you about Douglas Adams’ analogy of the puddle in the pothole that keeps shrinking as the temperature rises.

    Anyway, I once saw this whopper as a search string for someone who wound up on my blog: “is it legal to sh*t in public?” I have no idea how this led to me. No idea at all.

  2. If it makes you feel any better, Darmok, another search string used to find my blog was “fear of triangles”. Guess who was talking about that one on my blog? You!

  3. Just to add to this garage fight about who searches for what and the like, I think mine was the idea to post commented search terms in the first place (I have been doing for a year now), but you did not link me to give me recognition! 🙂

    Cheers,
    T.

  4. I’m sorry, Dorigo; it seems like a rather straightforward idea and I didn’t think to search to see if any other weblogs had posted search terms before. I think it is likely that others done so long before it occurred to you or me.

  5. Darmok – I find it quite interesting, too, to see what search terms bring people to my weblog. Sometimes I think some people must get quite a shock to read something I wrote! 🙂

  6. True in my case as well, but at the same time there could be those moments when someone finds something at our weblogs which opens a door for them that would not have been opened otherwise. 🙂

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