Home » Archives » August 2004 » Music used in Commercials / Weird Web Stats Search Strings

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08/04/2004: "Music used in Commercials / Weird Web Stats Search Strings"

Subway has started using a piece of instrumental music from "28 Days Later" in a TV add. I have a very sentimental attachment to this little piece of background music and it *really* pisses me off that Subway is using it. I essentially hate it when commercials use any music that I like because they ruin my associations with it. For example, I used to love Beethoven’s "Fur Elise" until McDonald used it for a huge add campaign where a bratty little kid was playing it for a piano recital and adds her own lyrics about wanting to eat at McDonalds. It's so unfair! At least with my TIVO I can skip over them now.

Another thing I heard recently was an interview with Dr. Laura about her new book The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands.

From Publisher's Weekly: "this controversial marriage and family therapist claims that every woman can achieve a deeply satisfying marriage if she adheres to certain fundamentals men require. Preparing dinner, caring for the children without complaint, greeting her husband with a kiss and engaging in sexual intimacy instead of "tearing down a husband's necessary sense of strength and importance" can result in the harmonious marriage women crave." AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Anyway, I emailed the Tony Knowles campaign today to see if they could have any use of an artist as a volunteer. I'm not sure they'll be interested but feel good that I have something unique I can contribute if needed.

On another note, I like to check my web stats at the start of a new month because I get to see the obscure search strings (my stats only show the top 20 searches so after the first week or so, it's mostly the same ole same ole) One new search string that keeps popping up has me a little perplexed "pretty feet". I have no idea why my site is getting so many hits for that that search string?

Two more that are really generic are "communication" and "angry". I can't imagine my site would post very high for such vague searches but I've been getting lots of hits for them...

I'd be curious as to strange search strings that others have found in their web stats.

Replies: 7 Comments

on Wednesday, August 4th, John said

Google, in its attempts to make searches even "smarter" has in addition to just cataloging websites, has looked at the words people use to link to other sites, for instance, some months ago, some #@$%!ing Bush supporters used the word 'waffle' as the link text for kerry's website, so that searches for the term 'waffle' would send you to kerry. I've heard, but can't confirm, that google also looks at the words used around a link as well when indexing pages. Someone (actually for it to work, probably several someones) may be using the terms 'pretty feet', 'angry', and 'communication' when linking to your site, or in text around their links to your site. Also, since the indexing process as I understand it involves counting the times any particular words appear in the site, you (or people leaving comments) may be using those terms enough to put your site near the top of the list when searching for them. The search sites however, supposedly ignore what are in the meta tags at the start of a webpage, porn site designers having long ago discovered (when the web was young) that repeating words in their comments or meta tags would get them higher up in search results for those words.
Some more useless knowledge from the everflowing brain of John....

on Wednesday, August 4th, support@elisetomlinson.com">Elise said

I'm really interested in search engine optimization techniques and also how different search engines algorithims are designed (as part of my job teaching lib and information literacy)...I've never read about google taking into account the words used to link to your site from external sources before, that's a really really bad idea!

Google has a page set up as an FAQ for web developers including this page on How Google ranks pages.

It seems no matter what search engines do to stop people from manipluating to get higher ranks, the web site optimizers are always a step ahead.

on Wednesday, August 4th, support@elisetomlinson.com">Elise said

Is this what you're referring to? The way they phrase it, it's kind of hard to tell...

"Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Google's search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), Google's technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query."

on Thursday, August 5th, John said

Basically. Do a google search on the term 'google bombing' (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22google+bombing%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8)
and that has links to information on the technique. I just googled 'waffle' (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=waffle)
and it appears that some kerry supporters have fixed it so it points to GW (bottom of the results page). If I recall correctly, the whole google bombing technique was started by bloggers. I know I read about it on Yahoo news at some point, so searching through there may yield some information too.

on Thursday, August 5th, centur said

Hi Elise I was going to reply to ur comment on good 'Husbandry 'with a rather 'crass feminist 'joke about not buying cows as opposed to not buying pigs for a little sausage ..but all the rather informed info on Google had me classsify my comment my self as waffle ;-) Thanks for ur comments :)

on Thursday, August 5th, support@elisetomlinson.com">Elise said

Ah yes, the google bomb. My favorite is what you'll see if you type in "weapons of mass destruction" in google.

(very funny)

But there is also a link to this article called Google Time Bomb
Will Weblogs blow up the world's favorite search engine? that goes into what you're were mentioning about the key words of sites that link to your site.

Very bizzaro.

on Thursday, August 5th, support@elisetomlinson.com">Elise said

Hey Centur,
You're right, no one should buy a pig just for a "little" sausage. hee hee.