There’s been a lot of hubub recently about AOL’s release of 650,000 users’ search information. Though the users were “anonymized,” The New York Times was able to analyze patterns to identify at least one person simply by what she searched for. Slate magazine has used the data to classify web searchers into seven categories, including the Pornhound and the Manhunter.
My web site statistics package (awstats) lists the search terms by which web browsers stumble upon my site. There’s certainly not as much data here as in AOL’s logs, but maybe there’s enough to form some kind of understanding about my visitors.
Here are the top search-driven hits to my site from the last 2½ months (June, July, and part of August).
| Term | # Searches |
|---|---|
| ugliest baby | 16 |
| world s ugliest baby | 11 |
| out of the mist | 9 |
| giant fcr3 | 8 |
| antm | 6 |
| blg | 6 |
| military time | 5 |
| giant fcr3 review | 5 |
| edsel ford contributes to dia | 4 |
| harry potter | 4 |
| underarm odor phobias | 2 |
| vintage clothes corktown | 2 |
| loose tooth dream | 2 |
| giant fcr3 | 2 |
| out of the mist blog | 2 |
| orange crate canoe boy scouts | 2 |
| dream of missing tooth | 2 |
| elevator buttons | 2 |
| mark fidrych videos | 2 |
| giant fcr3 seattle | 2 |
| giant fcr3 bike reviews | 2 |
| pharaceutical term pronunciation | 2 |
| Other phrases | 286 |
So, “The World’s Ugliest Baby Photo” is still drawing them in (27 hits, including variations). It also seems that people were curious about my new Giant FCR3 bike (19 hits, including all variations).
“America’s Next Top Model” is also a big draw; the 6 hits for “antm” doesn’t reveal it here, but under “Other Searches” there are quite a number of ANTM-related terms — it’s possibly the most popular topic. There are also a lot of variations on “loose tooth dream.”
Also under “Other Searches” we find such puzzling one-offs as:
dentist blog nitrous mask
big dongs
onion pete abortion
pansy furniture dubai
voice spoke chillingly close
i want to date you now
and, disturbingly,
i’m fucking my daughter the how
