Dead Zebras and the Mysteries of Google

As a society we give a lot of credit to Google. We rely on them for just about every piece of information that we need to easily find. This is a lot of power for one company to possess. Think about it, how hard would it be to to include or omit information based on what you would like society to be exposed to. Somebody is making those decisions which led me to immediately think of the obvious……dead zebras.

Over the past year I have been casually observing the statistics of my blog and have learned some rather interesting things…..

#1: In 2009 I had 459 visitors to this blog. 231 of those were tagged as “unique” visitors. And here I was always taught that everyone was unique.

#2. The average visitor spent and entire 50 seconds on my blog which tells me that I either have a small following of world class speed readers or people just don’t find me as interesting as I find myself.

#3. I’ve had two “unique” visits from Slovenia which I am guessing is in Eastern Europe but I honestly couldn’t tell you much more.

#4. By far my most viewed blog entry was written on February 11th and entitled Beer, Camouflage, and Dead Zebras 

I found the popularity of the Beer, Camouflage, and Dead Zebras entry curious. There wasn’t anything spectacular about the piece. In fact, it was simply an entry documenting my annual tip to the Portland Sportsman Show. I figured there must have been something more to this phenomena. So I Googled it…..

Not surprisingly when you type the word combination Beer, Camouflage, Dead, and Zebras my blog entry is at the very top of the Google list. So I tried other combinations to see how high up the entry was on the “Google List”…..

• Beer and Camouflage………#4 just after a “How to Camouflage Your Beer Can” tutorial. Why?
• Beer and Zebras……..#12 right after The Beer Goggler blog with naked pictures of some chick in a zebra striped skirt.
• Dead and Beer……Too far down on the list to even find. Apparently the word “dead” and a commonly consumed alcoholic beverage are often found in the same article.
• Dead and Zebras……#4 right after a myspace page for the band “Naybubble and the Dead Zebras”. I bet they’re glad they’re #3.

I find this to be a little disturbing. Not so much the way Google lists the search results, but more the keywords you need to type to get those results. What sicko is out there searching for beer and dead safari animals? I would think no one, but that apparently is not the case. In addition these people are finding my blog!! I’d better be nice. So the next time you are researching the life expectancy of Zebras, studying beer camo, or looking for dead animal pictures and come across my blog site stop in and say hello.