Fun with Google

The FGBC blog is like a neighbourhood bar--populated, for the most part, by a small group of regulars. From time to time, however, new folks wander into our virtual stomping grounds. Sometimes, those wanderings yield good fruit. For example, we are not exactly sure how the VP Style found us after he moved here from the Big Smoke, but we are sure glad he did.

Lately, we have had a number of new visitors to our humble strand of the vast interwebs. Usually, they find us via a Google search of one sort or another. And it is interesting to see how they find us. The Dark Side's Dept. of Pointless Research spent a little time looking into this phenomenon over the past few weeks. Here is what we found.

By far the most common Google search is "Tom Meeusen jump." Type it into Google and a link to the FGBC will show up on the first results page. Click on the link and you will be directed here.

Pretty straightforward stuff for a cycling blog that spends regular time paying attention to the pro cx circuit. But after that, it gets a little more interesting.

A close second, in order of popularity, is "nude cycling" or sometimes "nude cycling calender." Click on the link that search provides and you wind up here, no doubt more than a little underwhelmed by the result.

There's still a cycling term in that one. But sometimes even that is missing. It is at this point that things start to appear rather random. But arguably far more interesting.

Another very popular source of traffic to the Dark Side is a search for "red ass pics." It is not clear what the recent visitors from Brazil, India, and Redding, Connecticut were looking for when they typed that string of terms into Google. But this is what they found. Don't worry, it's safe for work.

A visitor from Madison, Wisconsin was looking for information on "inadvertent self-mutilation." Among other things, they found my haiku rendition of a far-too-close encounter with the former Omand's Creek pole.

Sophisticated search engine users will know that it is possible generate more specific search results by grouping terms in quotation marks, or even to string together a few such groupings. A recent visitor from Keyport, New Jersey did that with "Sandra Bullock" and "sexy nose" and ended up with this TNR Report from May 5, 2010. This is even more interesting in light of the fact that in our discussion the two search phrases had different referents. The "sexy nose" was mentioned in connection to Uma Thurman. And it was specifically contrasted with Sandra Bullock, who was described as possessing a more "straight ahead beauty." Too bad Ms. Bullock didn't leave a comment after she stumbled upon our website. We are curious to know what she thought of us.

Sandra Bullock isn't the only individual people were looking for when they found the Dark Side instead. Some came our way searching for the likes of "Brenda Schritt" and even Ice Bergen's daughter. While perhaps a bit strange, neither of those is entirely surprising. But someone from a molecular biology lab in Grenoble, France was looking for a certain "Thomas Springstein" and wound up looking at a photo of our own Cousin Thomas all kitted up in the sweetest jersey in the world. Another Google explorer was searching for information on "Ania Gonzalez." Who is Ania Gonzalez? We have no idea. But Daniel Ania Gonzalez is a guy who did even worse than the group of four Canadian CXers in Hoogerheide back in January of 2011. And for that we gave him a public word of thanks.

Interesting stuff. But not altogether surprising. In ten years worth of barrom chatter, you can cover a lot of ground.