Today's Essay Brought to You by Google


Wherein Our Heroine Reviews the Searches.
Aside from its primary use as a cracking good search engine, Google can be a nifty surreality check on what brings people to your site. Since I started writing WoT? in February, there have been some intriguing Google searches which brought readers to my homepage. I thought I might share them with you.

neda ulaby - This was the first "off the wall" Google search that I got. I bagged this link for my reference to her in "Manning the Ramparts." The fact that somebody came to my site off of a search for Ms. Ulaby was remarkable, though. I tried doing the same search at the time, because I wondered how many more infinitely relevant sites you would have to dig through in order to reach my little essay, which only referenced her in an incidental sort of way. WoT? came up on page three of the Google search. NPR (her employer's site, containing a bio) was the first result returned. If this person dug through all that to get to my site, it makes you wonder what they were really looking for...

show me an imaginary island that tells you the size - I love this one. I have no idea what the searcher intended to measure through displaying imaginary islands, but I do admire its Dadaist sensibility. I hope they enjoyed, "Oh, So That's It."

will rogers we can't all parade heroes sidewalk - This person either wanted the exact Will Rogers quote and didn't know about Bartleby's quotations online, or they were looking for the text of my mother's speech in "Guest Blogger." I know which one I hope it was. I'm more than a little proud of Mom.

buds typing - To the best of my knowledge, my plants, though blogged about on a fairly frequent basis, have never taken over the keyboard.

gang writing - Good grief. Anybody looking for gritty, inner-city observations must have been sorely disappointed by musings on plants, spring, word geekery, and my cranky ravings about heat, bugs, and the dog's noisy aversion to the sidewalk workmen. I wish them well. Recovery from the shock may not be swift.

writingortyping - All I can say is, if you already have the URL, you don't need to put it into Google. Also, don't double-click web links, open multiple browser windows if you want to compare sites, and you don't have to quit out of a program when you're finished with a document.

jill sawdon - Yes, I am the artist formerly known as Jill Sawdon. No long-lost person has gotten in touch with me lately, though, so I have to assume that whatever curiosity they had about me was assuaged.

Now, we get into what I call "The Cicada Chronicles." If you think I have gone on a lot about these critters, be sure you don't read the Washington Post until after the onslaught is over. Your head will explode.

maryland brood x cicada observations - I wonder if they were looking for bug sightings or just folksy musings on the subject. What they got was, "Today's Forecast: Hot and Buggy."

cicada warnings for pet owners - Sorry. I offer no practical tips on this subject, except: when they barf, clean it up.

cicada writing - Despite variable quality of WoT? essays, I swear I have never let a cicada do the writing. We have a "no literary cicadas" policy here at WoT?

Last, but not least, this just in this morning:

what is megrims - Let's just say we don't need to go into that again. And speaking of heads exploding, for goodness sake, I know it's just a Google search but you can't make your subject and your verb agree? Google's going to ignore the verb anyway, so best to leave it out in the first place. Besides, there are a zillion good dictionaries out there on the web. You don't need me for this. Now, go on - shoo!
Posted: Friday - May 21, 2004 at 08:13 AM         | |

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