My site meter just told me I surpassed 40,000 visits since shortly after this blog was begun. But look at the weird spike in my graph! (This image was taken just at the end of March, when it was most symmetrical.) The reason for the sudden jump is a passing hyperlinked reference (actually a dead link) to what is perhaps the most famous image by a certain flaxen-haired NY artist who famously speculated about everyone someday having 15 minutes of fame. (Fame, fame, fame... if he goes unnamed here, I think you'll see why.) Because of the link, my blog became the first on a list of Google Images for said image. Almost immediately, I started getting storms of hits from all over the world, although mostly from Britain. After I threw in a couple of soup can images to satisfy the hunger, the tide became a tsunami. In July and August I didn't post at all, yet recorded record numbers of hits. In September, I was getting as many as 400 Google visits a day for that single purpose. I figure I got as many as 12,000 in about three months and a half. Then, some time in October, visits plummeted back to normal. The reason: Google had bumped me down the list for said image, and whew -- what a relief! once again I could actually see on my site meter traces of fellow bloggers and researchers accessing this blog for its express purpose.
So these seemingly high numbers are, well, artificially inflated. Grossly inflated. As are most such numbers on the net.
5 comments:
Likewise, I am the go-to online source for 3D cats. Proving once again that content without context makes for strange search results. See here for more fun:
http://www.robertpeake.com/archives/234-Search-Is-Weird-A-Found-Poem.html
Hi Robert. I did a couple of posts like that: Google searches that reached my blog. Here are the highlights:
salamander woodwork
griffin woodwork
Ideas for Making Christian Woodworks
saddam rogue chimpanzee
used rhino tricycles
Chrysanthemums pink monkey
feather floating in air
quotes on ancient bricks
digital arts Tampa
British jokes on liquor brawls
huts in the of ride montreal-winnipeg
lyrics sometimes it's easy to fly out a window
poems with the word iodine in it
benoit balls for vagina exercises
lewd santa
leave my private parts alone
invisible peephole
narrative scuptures
woodwork writers
woodwork rubrics
patterns cow woodwork
woodwork reindeer
the great semelier
bushwhacked Canada
men undressing each other
mainline Philadelphia garage sales
apology for stealing someone’s secret
Campbell's bit and spur
largest organism on earth
largest orgasm on earth
and most eerie of all:
Brian Campbell found dead
Creepy on the search for your obituary. The others just cracked me up. I am equally fond of the Google AdWords advertising that simply substitutes search terms into the ad copy. For example, I just did a search for, "used rhino tricycles" and up came the ad:
Rhino Tricycles at Target
Find Rhino Tricycles Online.
Shop & Save at Target.com Today.
www.Target.com
Unfortunately, when I clicked the link, all the tricycles pictured were either empty or had toddlers on them. No odd-toed ungulates in sight.
It seems that there was a Brian Campbell who was an IRA gunman shot by the British in the '80s... proof positive that there are indeed Irish Campbells, part of the clan that floated across the water from Scotland back in the middle ages. Family rumour has it that my father's side may be descended from one of those, although there is some evidence to the contrary, but we like to think we were not part of that perfidious clan that sided with the British, slashed the throats of the Macdonalds in their sleep and committed many other notorious acts that make a Scotsman grue with horror. (And you should roll your tongue when you enounce "grue with horror.")
... and I should say "any proud Scotsman", since the Campbells are clearly not!
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