A Fool and his Words are Soon Parted

Search Potpouri January 30, 2006

One of the interesting things about WordPress is the Dashboard. In particular, the Blog Stats page gets my attention, not just because of the view count, but because it provides search phrases that people have used to find your blog. Given the recent headlines, where the major search engine providers are being asked to reveal the kinds of things people search for, I thought it might be interesting to take proactive look.

Tonight, I pulled out the phrases that hae been used for the past week or two, and noticed some interesting patterns, and some very interesting oddballs.

Ed Hochuli is King, but My Mother-in-Law is Queen
If there is one blog entry that stands head, shoulders, and biceps above any other, it’s “Ed Hochuli – The Facts,” which was a spoof of a similar page about Chuck Norris. There are all sorts of phrases that people have used to hit that page, ranging from references to Mr. Hochuli’s biceps, his job as an attorney, or the t-shirt that I bought my son.

Running a close second is the eulogy I wrote this past summer for my mother-in-law. Some people were searching for a “bad mother eulogy,” while others were looking for a good mother-in-law joke. Oddly enough, I think she would have appreciated all the various searches.

Two for the Show
If Mr. Hochuli and my mother-in-law garnered the Win and Place trophies, the Show award is a photo finish. Sharing music via iTunes is clearly a common query, but the new Intel-based iMacs are almost tied. Very close behind those are searches related to coaching, sports, and dealing with parents in sports.

Also clumped together were searches related to fools, foolish behavior, and random acts of stupidity, all of which are carefully documented in my blog. Interestingly, roughly the same number of people were also searching for parenting advice. Coincidence? I think not. (Parenting is a uniquely foolish, but rewarding, endeavor.)

And Now, Something Completely Different
There is no easy way to categorize some of the things that happened to generate a hit on my blog. Here are the oddballs:

• words related to february
• dessert after lobster
• names words vagina
• all girls have a vagina

All of these are strange, but the capper was this one:

• Is it ok for son & mother to have sex

Note to Feds: It’s officially my position that it is OK for a son to have sex, and for a mother to have sex, but not OK for a son to have sex with his mother.

Note to self: No more stories that use the words “mom” or “mother” and the word “sex.”

Dang it… did it again!