http://www.google.com/search?q=spock

By Todd Stadler · Wednesday, December 12, 2001 3:20pm

I've been doing a lot of touching up around Cockahoop lately, mostly behind the scenes.

You know, firing most of our editorial staff due to the economic downturn and whatnot.

One of the many pointless (but fun) features I added was the ability to track how people get to Cockahoop. These "referral logs" tell me what links people followed to get here, among other things.

Checking referral logs is a time-honored tradition that proves just how messed up the internet, or people, can be. A large number of people, it seems, happen upon a given page not because they particularly wanted to see it, but because a search engine pointed them there.

Of itself, this is not so unusual. But often the phrase that the person was searching for and the content of the page they are lead to seem incongruous. My webpage here is no exception.

It seems that the more I write on this page, the more likely that any random search on the web will point somebody my way. It's like an infinite number of monkeys and typewriters, only we're not producing Shakespeare, just more and more gibberish.

Ah, but what humorous gibberish. Why, for instance, does Google think that my page is relevant to "sudden feeling" or "gingham tablecloth"? I guess I used those phrases a few times somewhere in all my journal entries, but surely someone else talked about them much more.

I also have to wonder why I seem to be one of so few people talking about "Qwest billing problems" and "wacky hats", or why I am deemed especially knowledgeable concerning "leatherbound photo albums", "fried snickers", "vice presidential mansion facts", "chicken costume"s, or the "degauss button".

Perhaps more puzzling is why the following phrases, as of this writing, cause Cockahoop to be listed first by Google among all possible websites, leading one to believe that it is a repository of information related to these phrases: "scary reindeer", "3rd degree blackbelt in kung fu", "slutty club wear", "Corin Tucker journal", and, of course, "Vegetarian Journal archives".

These results can be blamed easily enough on the vastness of the internet. With so much out there, it's hard for a search engine to find a truly relevant page. It's doing well enough just to find a given phrase anywhere.

But it's not the software that bugs me. It's the people.

Why, for example, do so many people come to my web page looking for a "kung fu home study program" or asking "did alyssa milano have breast implants"? What is wrong with our science education that so many people ask "how is diet coke related to genetics"?

What possible answers could someone have expected for asking Google so casually "what went down with SATs this weekend"? What does that even mean?

Is something rotten in Britain that someone would ask "Can a 16 year old work for nothing in the uk"? Should Tony Blair be alerted?

And have interpersonal discussions really become so disfavored that people now eschew their fellow man, choosing instead to ask Google "what makes a person attractive"?

But you know, I can accept that people are going to be like that. What I cannot accept is what I found in my referral logs today. And that is an advertisement.

Yes, in that one variable with which a browser usually tells me whether it's Netscape or Intnernet Explorer or Opera or whatever, I found instead text that told me of "100MB Linux web hosting account just 8 dollars per month unlimited bandwidth" and suggested that I "sign up today".

I mean, is this effective? Is it necessary? Should I shelve my dreams of making money with my creative talents and instead open up the first ad agency specializing in $HTTP_USER_AGENT messages?

People are dumb.