Mythical Monsters
[–> "Maryland Mythical Monster" people, please see below.]
I have just discovered that I'm not the only one (I hadn't really expected to be, either) who has in interested in seeing the search strings that people use to get to my blog. (My earlier remarks about some unusual search strings are here.) Richard Rockley of Skeptico writes (in "Google Me"):
I love checking the Google search strings people use to find this site. It tells me exactly what people are searching for, which articles they find in their searches and Skeptico’s ranking for that search. […]
Until two days ago, astrology was the most popular subject ….
Today it has changed. Women’s breasts are now the number one subject….
I know how it happens. I noted earlier that I am apparently an authority on "Gay Fart Stories", for instance.
Since then, a few more of interest have turned up:
tight trousers
hedge apple trees
texas red heifer
Now, despite their oddity at first glance, these made sense in the context of some of the things that I have posted about. Use the search feature at right if you are interested.
Then, there are phrases that surprise me partly because I never would have expected to find that I'd actually used that combination of words, but mostly they surprise me because someone chose to search for these phrases, which seems unlikely:
gay dinosaurs
naked aviatrix
foreskin aesthetics
fat naked lady pictures
Unexpected, yes, but rather neutral; they don't really say much about the searcher, except to suggest an interest, say, in naked aviatrices, who may also be fat and naked.
Sometimes, however, a search string does show up which suggests that the searcher might be looking for people who agree with his own strongly held worldview. For example:
stupid ass libertyville teachers
Some people are just surprising:
people interested in group sex and the unusual
I would have expected that many people looking for "people interested in group sex" would already deem it "unusual" rather than looking for "people who are interested in group sex" in addition to being "unsual".
Then there's the total mystery search. I know how this one came about — that's not the point. I wrote a short post ("You Snollygoster You!"), that was really about the word "snarky". There's a quotation in it that refers to "… the snallygaster, a mythical monster supposedly found in Maryland…".
Immediately after I published that article, I started getting a continuous stream of searchers, mostly with UK addresses, looking for some variant of
maryland mythical monster
I am not particularly surprised that such a search string should have led searchers to my blog.
The perplexing question is why all these people in the UK are searching for "maryland mythical monsters" in the first place. Is it just because they're looking for a citation to the quotation that contained that phrase, or is there some more interesting plot afoot that demands urgent knowledge of such monsters?
I hope that someone visiting as a result of searching for "maryland mythical monsters" will leave a comment explaining why they did the search in the first place. Please!