Tuesday, August 09, 2005

It's That Time Again!

When the average person (read: not a business), opens their own website, be it a blog, a personal page or a fan page, they become obsessed with hits.

That’s all you care about. You’ll visit a blog, look at their hit counter and see an unimaginably high number like 500. ‘Wow!’ You think. ‘500 people have looked at this guy’s page! One day, that many hits will be mine!’.

From personal experience, I’ve started three websites. One was a photography website, that I stayed interested in for about a week, and the other one, which was my first, was just a personal webpage with stuff I thought was cool. (It even had a non-stoppable midi file that played when you got to the site…what was I thinking). The last, which is not a ‘website’ per se, is this blog.

However, these three had the same thing in common. When I first started them, I checked the hit counter every 5 minutes.

Over time, though, the sheen wears off. I honestly hardly ever check my hit counter any more. One sec…yep, I have 4099 hits right now. Once you hit around the 500-1000 mark, you just don’t bother any more.

However, one thing I do check on a regular basis is my keyword analysis.

‘Keyword analysis’ is a clever way of saying ‘what people typed into search engines to get to your site.

So why do I check it often?

Because it’s an absolute diamond studded, platinum plated comedy Goldmine. In fact, scratch that, it’s a platinum mine, with gold accents.

Now being a complete and utter geek, I get a huge sense of superiority from seeing just how much people suck at google. For example, say I want to find a review of a game I’m thinking of buying. Let’s say I want to find a review of Resident Evil 4 (and let’s also assume that I don’t know that IGN.com exists)

I’d type +”Resident Evil 4” +review

That means that google will only show hits that have ‘resident evil 4’ in the page, and not just ‘resident’, ‘evil’ or ‘4’. By adding the plus sign before ‘review’, I’ve made it a ‘must have’, so I’ll only get pages that have both ‘resident evil 4’ AND the word ‘review’.

It seems that the public at large have no idea how to do this.

I thank them for it, that’s why they end up here.

Now the non-geeks out there probably don’t find that one tenth as amusing as I do. That’s on a par with geek stories like ‘hur, hur (burst of funions and mountain dew erupt from behind the braces), that guy pronounces CMOS as Cosmos! (Snicker) what a n00b!”

However, what will be funny to everyone is the stuff that these freaks are looking for. Some are a little weird, some are downright strange…and others make you want to take a shower.

Here’s my current toplist of stupid searches:

‘Target Vanilla Mints’

I’m guessing this guy wanted some Vanilla Mints from Target. Unfortunately, I’m not certain Target have an online store. Either that, or this guy HATES vanilla mints, likes to shoot them, and is looking for others who share his hatred for these accursed confections.

‘Names of companies who sell Chitterlings in Cans.’

MMmm, mmm, mmm. Canned Chitterlings! Nothing like a can of ground up chicken guts to set the mouth watering. Not only does this show that this guy has absolutely no idea how a search engine works, he’s looking for the Canned Chitterling Superstore.

Think of it, he’s craving canned chitterlings so badly, he’s probably been to all his local stores, and is now desperately searching the old Interweb for a company that will ship some.

‘Girls caked in mud with Ked sneakers’

I swear I am not making this up. That is one fucked up fetish you’ve got their fella. Not just girls caked in mud, but wearing Ked sneakers as well! Imagine bringing that guy home to momma! Imagine this freak’s wedding night!

“Hey baby, I bought you something special for the occasion.”
“What is it? Lingerie?”
“No, some Ked Sneakers! Yeah, baby! Now slap these bad boys on, then roll in the vegetable patch for a while…I’ll meet you in the bedroom!”

‘32biz’

Now this is one of those sites that’s advertised on a backwater channel at 3am. You know “This wasn’t one of these get rich quick schemes, but guess what? I did!” and “I quit my job and now I’m earning $20,000 a month working just three hours a week!”

This, sadly, shows that there are people out there dumb enough to fall for those ads. However, the funniest thing is that these ads say ‘all you need is a home computer’.

Maybe they should stipulate that the person should be able to tell his address bar from a google search page. This guy can’t even put in a web address, and he’s going to be earning $20,000 a month with his computer!

‘County of Los Angeles Incident Report’

This disturbs me…a lot, and not just because this person thinks that LA is a county. (EDIT - I've been informed that LA is, indeed, a county. Yep, I can be stupid to! At least I have the fact that I'm a dirty immigrant as an excuse) Was this person trying to look up a particular report? Someone should have told him that incident reports aren’t available online. The other thing is, if this guy is trying to file a report…why doesn’t he just go to the police station? He’s got a grievance bad enough that he wants to fill out a report on it…however, if he has to move more than 6 feet away from his PC, he’s not going to bother.

Mower blades turn too slow’

Not only is this an example of bad English (It should be ‘too slowly’, you frigging idiot), it also scares me that this guy is allowed to operate machinery.

If I had a problem with my lawnmower and needed advice…I’d find a help forum, or at least type something along the lines of +(company name) +(lawnmower model number) +Servicing. What the hell did this guy expect to find? It’s like me getting sick and typing “I don’t feel well” into a search engine in the hope of getting something that could give me a diagnosis.

‘crabs wav finding nemo’

All one sentence. I’m guessing they want a wav file of the crabs from finding nemo. This is just a geek laugh, at someone not knowing how to use Google. Well, it would be, if not for…

finding nemo crabs wav’.

Not only did the first search not work, they tried it again, with the same keywords in a different order. Now anyone who knows how to use a computer knows this isn’t going to work. Google just looks for every page with all those particular words. Swapping the order will do nothing.

However, the real kicker comes in when you realize that this guy visited this site TWICE! It didn’t work the first time, but maybe the content of ‘Life, what the hell is going on’ will magically change if he clicks it again.

Mr ‘crabs wav finding nemo, finding nemo crabs wav’…you’re a dumbass.

‘DIY watergun’

“Hey honey? This supersoaker and the garden hose just don’t have enough ‘oomph’, get on the internet and find me some plans, will you?” I can see the headlines now:

“MAN DIES AFTER ATTEMPTING TO CONVERT 90,000,000 PSI COMPRESSOR TO A WATER GUN”

But do you want to know the scariest thing? I didn’t just go through my Keyword Analysis and cream off the stupid ones. The above list is EVERY single search that has landed on my site in the past few weeks. Every single search was like this.

So, for all the people responsible for the above searches I have this message:

Those straps are there for a reason. Please stop chewing through them

6 comments:

MC Etcher said...

People don't know such useful stuffs cause they're never taught.

How people manage as well as they do, I have no idea.

High School should be more about life, and less about facts. Teach people how to study, teach them strong math and English skills, and then the rest of the day is life lessons 101.

Like so:

English

Math

PC Tech

The World Wide Web

How Not to Be an Ass in Public

Car Tech

Managing Your Income/Budget

Personal Hygiene

Household Chores

How to Raise Your Child with manners

wow, this is almost turning into a post of its own... sorry to ramble.

OzzyC said...

Ummmmm... Los Angeles is a county. The city of Los Angeles is part of Los Angeles county.

Paulius said...

Ozzy, I stand corrected.

See, there are lots of dumb people on the internet...I'm one of them!

Etcher, agree with everything you said...especially the 'raising your kids with manners'.

Chief Slacker said...

Hey what tracker do you use to get those? Right now all I can view is tha last 10 refferals...

MC Etcher said...

Statcounter, from Statcounter.com. It's amazing, and free.

Kato said...

I'm with you Paulius, this type of thing will always be funny to me.

I used to mock people that pronounced Linux as "Lie-nucks". I won't get into the whole GIF as "gif" or "jif" quandry, though.