Pick Me!

A weblog by Laura Moncur

4/1/2004

March Google Search Phrases

Filed under: Blog Stuff — Laura Moncur @ 5:00 am

No time to talk about April Fool’s Day. I’ve got more interesting things to talk about than practical jokes.

caffeine withdrawals, caffeine withdrawal, caffeine withdrawal headache, how do i quit soda, how to quit soda, sprite soda carbonation, caffeine addiction withdrawal, caffeine headaches soda, caffeine withdrawal cold turkey, caffeine withdrawal remedies, advice on quitting caffeine

Hands down, the most searches hit me because I wrote the entry about how to quit soda. When I was quitting soda, there was no help on the Internet because there are so many herbal remedies trying to get your business. I guess my entry was the one voice that wasn’t trying to sell you anything. I hope it helped you guys.

cupcake, computer term for cupcake, #mormon cupcake   Ok, I’ll bite. What do these searches mean? Is “cupcake” a new slang for something that I wasn’t aware of before? Doing these searches taught me nothing I didn’t already know. Cupcakes are little cakes in paper cups. If there is a computer term for cupcake, I wasn’t able to find it and obviously neither were those poor searchers.

I did find a story about a guy that is using misspelled domain names to generate advertising dollars. This guy has registered thousands of domain names, each one housing thirty or forty pop-up ads. He makes a lot of money because of stupidity and poor typists. All the more reason to study up, learn to type and use Google instead of typing in what you think the domain name is. Cupcake was a hit because the guy registered a bunch of cupcake sites (i.e. Cupcake Party, Cupcake Patrol, etc.). I wonder if this is what those people were looking for. It doesn’t explain the Mormon thing, though. In fact, it makes me think that “cupcake” is some new slang for something pervy.

I found a really cool technical paper regarding The Cupcake Problem. I only understood the first page of this thing and it got all mathematical on me, so I stopped reading, but it showed me that there are people working on things that I never even conceived of. The Cupcake Problem is a study in which a younger child is given a task by an older sibling (who is in cahoots with the researcher). The older sibling says that they have just put some cupcakes in the oven and they need to be taken out in 30 minutes. It’s ok to keep playing on the X-Box, but you need to take out the cupcakes on time, got it? The researchers watch the younger child during that half hour, observing the number of times the child checks the clock. All of this has to do with calculating monitoring activities. It got really technical really quickly, but it showed me that there are cool people out there. Rock on, Paul Cohen, Marc Atkin and Eric Hansen.

I did find a funny site recreating the Janet Jackson fiasco in cupcake form. I found a news brief about a boy who drugged Mormon missionaries with cupcakes, but that was back in 2000. There was also a reference to the movie Orgazmo, in which a Mormon missionary is introduced to the porn industry. This movie was a hit at the underground theater here, but I never saw it. It sounded like it might be a little negative and I don’t really play that way. Apparently, “Cupcake” is the pet name for the missionary’s girlfriend back home. I wonder if that was it.

<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />st john climacus, patron saint of obesity

Apparently, I’m not the only one looking for the Patron Saint of Obesity. I’ve had several hits with these search strings. Keep fighting the fight, searchers. It’s worth it.

%22gathering randomness%22

They found me on page 6 of the Google search. I don’t know if they found what they were looking for. These sorts of searches make me think that I don’t know what is going on. Do the percent signs mean anything? What about the number 22? The only reason I showed up is because there was a little note at the bottom of my entry about Gathering Randomness for the previous date. Is the percent sign some sort of wild card? Why didn’t they search for the number 42? I guess if they knew the meaning of the universe, they wouldn’t be searching.

bathroom exhaust fans stopped working

I have no idea what this person was looking for. I waded through seven pages of websites that were perfectly willing to tell me how to fix the problem. Maybe they were looking for someone who could fix their exhaust fans. Maybe my entry enticed him. This is how my entry looked at Google, “… for a second or two and then final darkness and an eerie quiet that I have never heard in that bathroom. The ever-turning exhaust fan had stopped turning. …” I didn’t know that my entry about Friday the Thirteenth would bring people because of the bathroom exhaust fan. How glamorous.

what does the dragonfly symbolize

Yes! Two people on this planet found my entry on dragonflies. They found my entry explaining exactly what I had been looking for. I had been wondering, “What does the dragonfly symbolize?” No single site was able to help me, but now, my entry is there for all those people in the future who want to know the same thing. Hint for the kids at home: dragonflies mean nothing or everything, depending on how superstitious you are and how much weed you smoke. Stay clean, kids.

iris/goddess

Honey, I think you were looking for Isis, not Iris.

That’s it for me. Let’s do this again next month!

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1 Comment »

  1. For your future “SLANG” Definitions. Check out http://www.urbandictionary.com. It has usually MORE then you want to know.

    :) Jo

    Comment by Nava_jo — 7/10/2006 @ 9:20 am

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