Google: Did you mean...?

There's a really great tool deep in the heart of Blogger that enables me to see how random people have come to stumble on my blog through search words. I mean, it tells me exactly what words they typed into the search engine in order to find my website. It's very cool and it really helps to learn what topics of mine are engaging a wider audience. But sometimes, it just confuses me.

To try and illustrate these search terms, I've included the very first photo that comes up when I search these terms myself. I hope you find them more helpful than I did.

"boy in a dress party": I would not say I am an expert in the field of boys in dresses at a party. My only experience is one Friday night when some friends were really bored and I was really accommodating, they dressed me as a drag queen, so for an hour or so I was a girl pretending to be a boy pretending to be a girl.

"scratched cornea" & "swollen knuckle": These two search terms are always rating amongst my highest traffic magnets. In fact, 'scratched cornea' is my single highest traffic raiser. Anyone would think I am an expert on obscure injuries or something.

"tool girls": I'm not sure what a tool girl is. Any guesses? Or is this something that is NSFW (which, for the uninitiated, means 'New South F#$@ing Wales'. (Actually, no it doesn't. I learned what it really means when I misread the words 'spent the day fisting' as 'spent the day fishing' and opened the accompanying photo.)

"anti+twitter": Yes, I was traumatised by that NSFW tweet but I wasn't exactly anti-Twitter, just anti-that-porn-star-that-was-funny-to-follow-until-he-scarred-me-for-life.

"hipster zombie before it was cool": While I'm not 100% sure, I think it's safe to say that before a hipster zombie was cool, it was just an elitist prat of a zombie who ate only the brains of vegans. But that's just a guess.

"justin bieber circumcised or uncircumcised": If I thought I was scarred after the 'fisting' tweet, I was naive. This search term has actually kind of traumatised me. I was in love with Josh Hartnett as much as a 15 year old girl can be. But I had ONE photo (out of the 100+) on my wall of him without a shirt on. It was from Black Hawk Down and he's in fatigue pants and dog tags, and a bit war-torn & dirty. But I never, in my young adolescent fantasties gave a second thought to his penis. He was like a Ken doll to me when I was 15. Hell, even now (when my sadly misguided affections have moved on to Topher Grace) do I have any thoughts of penises. Is that just me?

"raptor penis": If there's one consolation in the Justin Bieber horror story, it's that only one person found my blog searching that term. Thankfully the internet does not deem me an expert in the field. However, multiple people stumbled on my blog searching for more information on raptor penises. I can not fathom what information they were searching for but I sure hope they didn't find it here!

And lastly, an honourable mention must go to the following...

"what is that raptor sound in my backyard": This made me laugh & I hope this reader got a giggle out of my blog post about this very same subject. It's one of my favourites. (And the second photo in Google Images was the movie poster I made for this blog post.)

Miss SAMawdsley xx

PS: I have the lovely Miss Wanderlust to thank for this blog idea. She was the first person I saw do it and I give her all credit!

Questions:

• Can you explain any of these search terms?
• If you have a blog, what are some bizarre search terms that provide you traffic?
• What are some seriously weird things you've had to google? And why?

Which of the five senses do you value most of all?

Traditionally, humans have five senses and for the purpose of this article, I'm only referencing those five.

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Over the weekend, I played golf. I ended up in emergency. Now normal golfers may complain of a sore shoulder after a dodgy swing, sprain an ankle searching for a stray ball in the rough or suffer severe heatstroke after too much sun and not enough water. But not me. No, no... On the third hole, after a pretty damn good tee shot, I... well, I don't actually know what I did. I was walking along and then my eye was agony. I couldn't blink, I couldn't hold it open, it watered and it was agreed that I soon resembled a severely sleep-deprived panda after a night with the wolf pack from The Hangover...


Long story short, it turns out I somehow scratched my cornea. I've never felt such unbearable pain and discomfort. I say discomfort because I could not open my eyes. On the way home from the hospital, my boyfriend bought me a McFlurry - a delicious, caramel and choc bicky McFlurry with gooey goodness and creamy yumminess... but I digress! I couldn't eat the damn thing because I couldn't see if I was dripping food all over the couch. I could only guess where the cup was and finding my own mouth wasn't much easier!

We curled up on the couch to watch football. I don't know about my boyfriend, but for me, that's one of my favourite parts of my week - watching the Liverpool match. Have you ever tried to 'listen' to a football match? I love football but listening to a football match is about as fun as sitting in on a 13 year old sleepover when the topic has turned to Justin Bieber. My dad argues that he 'listened' to Liverpool win the European Cup back in the 60s - but as he himself admits, the commentator on the radio was concious that his listeners could not see so made necessary adjustments.

I got up to go to bed and blindly made my way towards the hallway. My poor boyfriend quickly got up to frog-march me to the bedroom. I'm not sure if this was to save my poor struggling self or to stop me putting my hands all over his wall. But I felt bad when he had to do things for me. I currently wear braces so have to brush my teeth a lot. Putting toothpaste on my toothbrush is not fun when you're blind.

The doctor told me in order for my eye to get better I was not allowed to read, watch TV, look at a computer screen or drive. Do you know what is left to do when you take those things off the table? Not a lot. I 'listened' to a documentary on nuclear submarines. I tell you, hearing about how impressively huge a submarine is does not equal seeing it. Not even close.

Now I wasn't even blind. Other than the pain, my vision was only slightly blurry in the bad eye and my other eye perfectly fine and functional (once the pain I felt when in a state of permanent wink subsided). I enjoy watching DVD's with only subtitles on, I watched most of the 2010 World Cup in silence at 4am and could communicate by reading. I would miss smell and taste but really, life would go on. Touch would be a really difficult one to lose but I'm not entirely sure it's even possible to lose your sense of touch, is it? But after those few days, I have decided one thing. The one sense I could never live without is sight.

So I ask:

Please leave a comment below!

Miss SAMawdsley xx


PS: I want to tell the cutest story about my boyfriend! He drove me to the hospital late on Saturday night, all prepared to sit with me for hours. My eyes were closed for obvious reasons and the following conversation took place.
Him: "OK, we're here. Where do I go?"
Me: "You're looking for the signs that say 'emergency'. Park near there because we're going to emergency."
Him: "Emergency? Sam, your eye is sore, you aren't dying!!!"