Fun with Search Engines

Like many bloggers, I am fascinated by my referral stats, especially the search engine referrals. Some people keep lists of the funniest hits that brought people to their site; I wish I had done that from the beginning. I’ve had some doozies, but I forget what most of them were. I did get a kick out of the time someone found my blog by Googling "homeschooling your obnoxious teenage son." I don’t suppose I was much help that time: sorry about that, whoever you were.

Jane reminded me of the time someone searched for "popsicle sticks peacock." I wasn’t much help there either, but we sure had a good time exploring the other links Google brings up for that string.

These days I’m getting a lot of hits from variations on "mom planners" and "planner for moms." My favorite: "planner obsession." (Which: I’m the number three hit on Google for that string. A dubious honor!)

But I’m glad the planner series has been helpful—and guess what! More to come! I have two more planners awaiting review. Oh, the giddy joy!

Another topic that appears frequently in my stats is hearing loss. Here’s a sampling from the past week:

speech banana
funny asl photos
deaf aid hearing funny home
funny american sign language quotes
preschool sign language curriculum
asl videos lending libraries
is montessori education a good option for hard of hearing children?

I’m afraid I wasn’t much help on that last question, but it’s sort of gratifying to come up on three different searches for the humor in hearing loss.

There are always many hits from people looking for homeschooling information, curriculum recommendations, unit studies (especially for specific books), Charlotte Mason, unschooling, and related topics. Lately I’m seeing more and more searches for "classical education" and "Latin-centered." It’s fun to track the waves of interest in certain educational methods by their frequency in the stats.

At first I was excited by this hit: "caterpillar parsley fennel." I know the answer! It’s a black swallowtail! Then it struck me that that person would have landed on our grisly and tragic adventures with poor Homer, and that probably isn’t what he or she was bargaining for.

Someone Googled "charlie brown linus cracker bend" and I felt a rush of warmth—oh! a friend! someone who appreciates the brilliance of Snoopy! (The musical, and also the dog.) And it’s true, you know: you CAN’T bend a cracker, no matter how hard you try.

How proud am I to be the number one hit on Google for "Schoolhouse Rock 30th"? All those hours spent sitting through bad Saturday morning TV, waaaaaiiiiiting for the next Grammar Rock spot—not a waste after all! I know my parts of speech AND I’m a search-engine top spot for the, um, must be millions? of people who are interested enough in the fact that Schoolhouse Rock celebrated its thirtieth anniversary to actually look it up. Okay, maybe not millions. Maybe two. Or one. But you, whoever you are: I am so with you. It was a day well worth celebrating. I’m willing to bet that ninety percent of the American children who learned the preamble to the Constitution in the last thirty years owe that knowledge to Schoolhouse Rock.

(Admit it. You’re singing it right now, aren’t you?)