How Do People Find This Web Site, Anyway?

One advantage the Internet has over publishing a real magazine is that, although computers can't tell us who our regular readers are and what they're getting out of our web sites, computers can tell us who our random readers are, what they're looking for...

According to Google, not many people discovered this web site by Google searches all winter, but this week we were discovered by one person searching for each of eight things other than PriscillaKing.Blogspot.com. So this post contains a comment for each of those eight people, in alphabetical order:

1. Amazon River Dolphin, fun facts: Congratulations to anybody who searched long enough to find this tidbit (http://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2012/03/fun-facts-about-amazon-river-dolphin.html). All I posted were links to two pages, both of which Google would probably have pulled up first. One of those links was broken when Associated Content collapsed. There are over 150 web pages that contain more fun facts, from alternate names for these creatures ("botos," "river manatees," more) to details about their mating habits some people probably prefer not to know.

2. Cheapest price for Porko von Popbutton: You probably found that at one of the other sites Google pulled up first, too. An intriguing quote Google also pulls up, from the archives of a blog some readers may enjoy (daddytypes.com): "I think the moral of the story is, fat kid learns to love being fat." Hmm. At the end of the book Pat's lost pounds, and at his age he's probably gained a few inches in height; I think the original words were "he had slimmed down."

3. "Is Vitarroz cornmeal gluten-free?" Although I bought several Vitarroz products, when I lived in Maryland, and thought most of them were a good bargain--at least as good quality as Goya, sometimes better, and always offered for a lower price--I didn't even know Vitarroz packaged cornmeal. I learned something today. I've not seen Vitarroz products in stores in my part of the world. From the company's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/vitarroz?rf=152555071421473) it looks as if they've started offering a nice, coarse-ground, all-maize cornmeal, which would in theory be gluten-free provided that the company can find natural, GMO-free corn. God made corn gluten-free. The evil Monsanto Corporation spliced genes from disease bacteria ("But it's a strain of Escherichia coli that rarely makes humans sick") into corn to produce "Roundup-Ready" corn plants that (a) produce grain containing proteins more similar to wheat gluten, so although technically they don't contain wheat gluten they still make gluten-intolerant people just as sick as if they did, and also (b) absorb glyphosate, an allergy trigger that can become poisonous if humans eat enough of it, which is sprayed onto many North American cornfields that are owned by people too lazy to swing a hoe. How well Vitarroz is doing at finding and marketing only the kind of corn God made, I don't know.

4. "Pictures of Tori Cooley in Gate City (Virginia)." Dream on, young man. This web site contains a couple dozen pictures taken by Tori Cooley, who is a gifted photographer as well as a model, but no pictures of Tori Cooley.

5. "Priscilla's where fun and fantasy..." Apparently this used to be an advertising slogan for a chain of lingerie stores that are currently called Patricia's.

6. "PriscillaKing.Blogspot.ru." When I set up this Blogspot I had no idea that Blogspot.com pages also show up, still in English, as Blogspot.ru. Also Blogspot.fr. Hmm. Blogspot.ca? Yup. Blogspot.uk? Nope--U.K. readers are redirected to Blogspot.com, and according to site statistics they don't keep coming back as faithfully as French and Russian readers do, possibly due to online publishing issues. (I just had to see how my blog looks in French...it looks pretty bad. I don't know why translation software stumbles over such simple things. "Sanctuaire Dog"? Why not "Sanctuaire Chien"? And why was it not obvious that a "today" would have been "aujourd'hui"?) The foreign URLs bring up this web site, but not all of it seems to get through; links and sometimes photos just disappear; there's more white space, presumably where international publishing agreements block access to some links. Interesting.

7. "Seventh-Day Adventist interracial." Only yesterday, while digging through real documents for something else, I turned up a copy of Insight magazine's "Fudge Marble" issue. October 1987? I think. I didn't bring the magazine to the computer center. The synchronicity bemused me enough today that I not only found, but e-mailed, Insight's current staff at http://www.insightmagazine.org/.

8. "Walnut Caterpillar survival." Datana integerrima is not an endangered species. Though not common in the Eastern States, they're very common in the Central States, and in Texas they even manage to become pests. However, if you type those three words into Google you'll pull up http://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2013/12/know-your-pests-walnut-caterpillar.html, I think because that post mentions that trees usually survive infestation and that a few caterpillars usually survive True Green methods of extermination.