Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Dell beta-testing, Angus King, and Junior Seau: search engines gone wrong
One of the nice things about using Blogger is that it provides information on where my traffic comes from. When someone clicks through to my site from a search engine, the keywords from the search are typically embedded in the referring URL. This makes it easy to go back and re-perform the sometimes totally irrelevant searches that led surfers to click on my site when they were searching for, perhaps, dog biscuits in Spain. I made that last one up, but the ones below are real. Please keep in mind that I'm sharing these all in good fun, and I'm certainly not complaining about the ways in which readers may have found their way to this site:
"dell beta testing" I've taken Michael Dell's name in vain a few times, and I've written about beta testing Safari, but someone needs to explain to me why my site comes up fifth in the alltheweb.com search engine under this search criteria. What puzzles me more is why someone would be searching for "dell beta testing" and then actually click on this site. Oh well, we're happy to have you, whoever you are, and I hope you've found what you were looking for.
"tangerine iBook Charles Moore" I've never written about a tangerine iBook, although I once nearly bought one. I've never written about Charles Moore, although I sometimes read his Mac-related columns. Searching for these four words really shouldn't lead to my site, but once again, thanks for clicking through, and I hope you'll stick around. You can find Charles Moore's work here.
"what Governor Angus King thinks is the key to Maine's success" Apparently, Google seems to think that the answer to this question is "iBook", because nearly half of the sites on the first page of the search results are Macintosh-related sites that mentioned Maine's student iBook initiative. Well, I'm honored to be one of them, for whatever it's worth. Ironically, my site ranks higher in this search than it does when simply searching for "Bill Palmer". Ah, the curse of having a common first and last name. Maybe I should change my name to "Angus".
"Picassa digital software" I've thrown a few jabs at Picassa, the lame iPhoto knockoff for Windows users, but does that really merit my site ranking fourth in the world when it comes to being a source of information on that particular software title? Does no one in the Windows world actually write about Picassa? Or has no one on the Windows side even heard of it? So much for the notion that it was going to kill off Windows users' motivations for switching to Mac and using iPhoto.
"Junior Seau Miami Pictures" I go and make one little reference to one of the newest players on my favorite football team at the end of one of my columns, and that makes me the seventh-best source on the planet for pictures of Junior Seau? Too bad my site doesn't actually have any pictures of Junior Seau. It goes to show just how difficult searching for pictures on the Internet can still be. I won't dare mention that the Dolphins are on the verge of signing former Denver Broncos quarterback Brian Griese, or Lycos will declare me "the official website of the Miami Dolphins". Oops, I just did. If you're reading this because you were searching for information on Brian, then you've just proved my point.
I should point out that none of the above searches were performed using quotation marks, which is perhaps why they went so astray. Even as search engines continue to grow smarter, the web remains a wonderfully wacky place in which to try to hunt down information. I won't even go into detail about the traffic I received when I mentioned that Live, Ed Kowalczyk's alternative-rock band, used Macs in the studio on its latest album. Of course, when Live is the name of the band, I guess the search engines don't stand a fighting chance.
Please note that I'm changing the name of this site to Angus Kowalczyk, Macintosh Specialist. If you would like to contribute one dollar to anguskowalczyk.net, you can do so via PayPal by clicking here. Thank you for your support.
One of the nice things about using Blogger is that it provides information on where my traffic comes from. When someone clicks through to my site from a search engine, the keywords from the search are typically embedded in the referring URL. This makes it easy to go back and re-perform the sometimes totally irrelevant searches that led surfers to click on my site when they were searching for, perhaps, dog biscuits in Spain. I made that last one up, but the ones below are real. Please keep in mind that I'm sharing these all in good fun, and I'm certainly not complaining about the ways in which readers may have found their way to this site:
"dell beta testing" I've taken Michael Dell's name in vain a few times, and I've written about beta testing Safari, but someone needs to explain to me why my site comes up fifth in the alltheweb.com search engine under this search criteria. What puzzles me more is why someone would be searching for "dell beta testing" and then actually click on this site. Oh well, we're happy to have you, whoever you are, and I hope you've found what you were looking for.
"tangerine iBook Charles Moore" I've never written about a tangerine iBook, although I once nearly bought one. I've never written about Charles Moore, although I sometimes read his Mac-related columns. Searching for these four words really shouldn't lead to my site, but once again, thanks for clicking through, and I hope you'll stick around. You can find Charles Moore's work here.
"what Governor Angus King thinks is the key to Maine's success" Apparently, Google seems to think that the answer to this question is "iBook", because nearly half of the sites on the first page of the search results are Macintosh-related sites that mentioned Maine's student iBook initiative. Well, I'm honored to be one of them, for whatever it's worth. Ironically, my site ranks higher in this search than it does when simply searching for "Bill Palmer". Ah, the curse of having a common first and last name. Maybe I should change my name to "Angus".
"Picassa digital software" I've thrown a few jabs at Picassa, the lame iPhoto knockoff for Windows users, but does that really merit my site ranking fourth in the world when it comes to being a source of information on that particular software title? Does no one in the Windows world actually write about Picassa? Or has no one on the Windows side even heard of it? So much for the notion that it was going to kill off Windows users' motivations for switching to Mac and using iPhoto.
"Junior Seau Miami Pictures" I go and make one little reference to one of the newest players on my favorite football team at the end of one of my columns, and that makes me the seventh-best source on the planet for pictures of Junior Seau? Too bad my site doesn't actually have any pictures of Junior Seau. It goes to show just how difficult searching for pictures on the Internet can still be. I won't dare mention that the Dolphins are on the verge of signing former Denver Broncos quarterback Brian Griese, or Lycos will declare me "the official website of the Miami Dolphins". Oops, I just did. If you're reading this because you were searching for information on Brian, then you've just proved my point.
I should point out that none of the above searches were performed using quotation marks, which is perhaps why they went so astray. Even as search engines continue to grow smarter, the web remains a wonderfully wacky place in which to try to hunt down information. I won't even go into detail about the traffic I received when I mentioned that Live, Ed Kowalczyk's alternative-rock band, used Macs in the studio on its latest album. Of course, when Live is the name of the band, I guess the search engines don't stand a fighting chance.
Please note that I'm changing the name of this site to Angus Kowalczyk, Macintosh Specialist. If you would like to contribute one dollar to anguskowalczyk.net, you can do so via PayPal by clicking here. Thank you for your support.
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