Spreading Rumors

Dipping into usage statistics is always an adventure. You just never know what you will find. One of the more interesting things to check is the search engine terms that lead people to the blog. There have been a fair number of hits from people searching for josh shapiro senate lately, understandable as he is mentioned as a possibly candidate for that office.

The weird ones though, are seldom just mildly weird. I can tell you that one of my regrets regarding the blog is having once written a blog post about inappropriate ads on a network devoted to animated features primarily aimed at children. There is a neverending stream of people searching for the name of the network and a three letter word starting with s and ending with x. It brings in traffic but it's not traffic I want.

There are speculations on people's sexuality. The general populace has an alarming lack of understanding on what office people hold, but the general tendency is to elevate state reps to congressional reps and congressional reps to senators. Some people, seemingly in frustration, just type in a candidate's name and various insults. It's once reason I don't include profanity in blog posts -- it would just widen the possibilities for this kind of traffic.

Today, however, the weirdness hit a new level. To the person who was concerned about this enough to google it, there is no evidence that governor Ed Rendell has a wooden leg. Granted I've never kicked him in the shins but my guess is that if Ed had an artificial limb we'd know.

Rest assured that while I can often see what search terms people used I can seldom tell anything about the person doing the searching.