One of the things I do while obsessively trying to broaden my blog readership, spread the angry meme and take over the world is check to see what search terms land people on my blog. Predictable enough, many of the searches include some variant of "angry" but some of criteria that result in search engines pointing people here are more intriguing, if not downright funny.
No surprises that writing about Stephen Colbert in the last week has been good for attracting readers although this has more been the case with blog aggregators like Technorati than search engines like Google. I hope I haven't been too cynical on this front - the longer pieces I've written have been heartfelt and I've kept the jokey littering of Stephen Colbert keywords and tags to a minimum. Except then. That double reference to Stephen Colbert was a little gratuitous. So was that. Anyway, join the Church of Colbert.
Some other search terms that have given me a smile (or puzzled me) are:
"Words to use when angry" - I hope they meant angry words to use for venting, they're in the right place for that. If they were looking for calming words, they're shit out of luck.
"How to calm angry teenagers" - ummm, sorry, you fucked up there. I'm no help to you on that front.
"Why does a year have 365 days?" - this one threw me for a while. Then I worked out it was from the blog title. There were four variations on this so I suspected this may have been some sort of school project somewhere. If that was the case, those kids were probably all suspended for visiting an obscene site.
"guys fucking parents" - oooookay. I really don't think I want to meet that person.
Search engines are weird.
6 comments:
Strangely enough when I used the title "Stephen Colbert Nude" I didn't really pick up anyone looking for Stephen Colbert, but plenty of people who did the search "nude" and presumably were rather curious about the title of that post.
Apart from that I get a lot of people searching for "mutant, or mutant people, mutant dick, or mutants will rule the world. Amongst recent odd searches were "something awful cats" and "Why did Brandes get eaten?" Sometimes I get weirder ones than those.
Hahahaa, search engines: the window into the damaged sould of humility. On another blog I read, she writes a story about torture in guantanamo and get serach hits for the term "crushed testicles gay sex".
i found a blog awhile ago - referenced here - http://pigeonweather.blogspot.com/2006/02/fiction-as-string-of-keywords.html - where they talk about how to use blogs to make money writing fiction, and the way they do it is that their fiction is just a shitload of keywords that people might use when searching. one of the more idiotic thing i've come across - why not go all the way and open your own porn site?
Tom - I absolutely agree. Those sites designed to "cheat" without offering any true value nystify me. I think they're flat-out dumb.
How's this for a proposal: I am planning to start a joint blog with a friend. I am seriously considering theming it as an intellectual/artistic exercise to see if we can write posts specifically tailored to valuable Adsense words and search terms. The challenge is to write worthwhile, entertaining content while attracting the most expensive adwords and maybe making some money.
I might even make it a group blog or a fundraising effort for some worthy charity. What do you think?
interesting idea (i like the fundraising aspect as well as the challenge) - do you have some way of finding out the AdSense value of words or terms? i couldn't even begin to guess, so some insider info would be useful!
it reminds me of a computer "game" i wrote some years ago called Demagogues - two players took turns typing in speeches, attempting to sway the crowd to their side. unknown to the players was the 'dictionary' of values, which was heavily weighted towards the cynical.
Tom: I think with research it would be possible to find these details out. I've seen some articles on it before.
I love the sound of your game. Why am I not surprised that it tilted towards the cynical? ;)
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