Thursday, July 03, 2003

Grasping At Blogs

I love watching the hitcounter rise, but I harbor no illusions that many or even most people who find their way here do so deliberately. In just the past thirty hours, this site has been "hit" by people apparently looking for:

nicotene gum

blocked eustacian tubes

Blair Hornstein, but not Blair Hornstine, and, sometimes, Blair Hornstien, to which google asks did you mean Blair Hornstein?

Other recent search-term hits include people's thoughts wander during presentations, hat wander lost, dave chapelle im icons, uvula picture, free download finepix viewer, darcie sex videos, and, for some reason, wkyc on shaw digital cable. None of these have any reference in this blog yet, although I've been meaning to post a uvula picture.

Mrs. Fezziwig, who mused about google search relevance after getting hit the other day with the matrix defense, proposes a good anti-glut solution: adding to google an option to "run search with (or without) weblog results." If this isn't in the works already it's sure to be picked up; I hope google pays her well for the idea. (See my comment to Mrs F. for my own socially darwinist philosophical approach to the social ramifications of endemic search stupidity. )

But the tools are mostly there, even if no one uses 'em. Notably, almost every mis-hit I've seen could be "solved" with use of quotes around a phrase to isolate it as one "term," a simple change-in-habit that significantly filters out blogs and other not-exactly-it hits.

If you're not already doing this, you should. In the meantime, management cannot be held responsible for fruitless searches.

Aimless Zen wandering remains heavily encouraged.

posted by boyhowdy | 1:47 PM |

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