String Theory

Atheism
Politics
Memes
Mind
Matters
Interact
Feedback
Email
String
Random
Links
Debate
Home

Atheism
Politics
Memes
Mind
Matters
String
Random
Interact
Feedback
Email
Links
Debate
Home

What is all this about?

These pages are a vital part of this site. They are an experiment in search engine optimization and a work of art in their own right.

The story starts several years ago in a faraway place in the time of the ancients when strange beasts roamed the Earth and people thought 56K modems were the work of Beelzebub. I had a connection to the internet via a phoneline and a modest amount of free webspace. It was becoming clear to me that as my site was expanding I would grow out of the free webspace within 18 months. I needed to consider moving the site. I made some enquiries and a Pagan Celtic dwarf working in the electrical retailer known as Miller Brothers made the suggestion that I try Dabsol. This company offered unlimited webspace for free, the only catch was that you could only connect to the space via their telephone number, but the connection charge was quite modest. It seemed like a great solution. I would be using webspace separate from that of my ISP and I need never run short of space. The speed seemed reasonable too so I made the move.

I was quite happy with the service for several months. One day I noticed something new. A log file. Out of curiosity I downloaded it. Wow. I had unlocked a secret treasure. Here was raw data that told me so much. I could see who was visiting me, what pages they visited, in what order and most fascinating of all what they were searching for.

My sceptical brain immediately worked out why this file was there, to tempt me into being online for longer and so make them more money. That was fine by me. This stuff was fascinating.

I started to publish extracts from this log on my site,amusing search strings. I knew straight away that this was a dodgy thing to do so I put robot tags on the page to top search engine robots from indexing the material as it was obvious that publishing a failed search string would lead more people to the page looking for something that wasn't there just as it wasn't there on the page they were directed to. I tried to do the right thing, unfortunately I got the code slightly wrong and it didn't work. The positive feedback had begun.

Homer sexuals

My page The Maggie simpson Model must have been the start of it along with a discussion of the evolution of breasts and buttocks as sexual display. I started to get people looking for pornographic pictures featuring the Simpsons. How sad and sick is that? Who were these people? Homer sexuals?

By reporting search strings together in a list unexpected juxtapositions occurred. These unexpected juxtapositions created novel combinations that no other site could offer. The site started to get significantly more traffic, much of it coming to look for the stuff that wasn't really there.

I don't know exactly why I was given my own webspace, but I am sure that these feedback pages were part of the story. The space I was offered came complete with Webalizer, a program which would automatically analyse the log for me. Fantastic. I could keep an eye on how many people were visiting the site, where they were coming from and what they were looking for.

At first it was just telling me the top 10 or 20 search strings which told me that all my efforts to score well for "atheist" and "atheism" were rather futile. Other sites had those words wrapped up. Sites that didn't have a lot of stuff and didn't add to it like I was doing. This made me resentful and bitter. It also stiffened my resolve to do better. So I couldn't beat them at their own game I would have to do better in other ways. I knew what I could do. For a start I stopped messing about with just the top search strings, I wanted to know about all of them. Tens of thousands of strings every month.

string theory

I would develop my own advanced string theory. I would analyse the strings used to find the site and use them and my understanding of them to bring in more traffic. Of course I felt guilty about doing it because it was bringing in people under false pretences. But then I thought again about it and decided that it wasn't a big deal. What's the worst that could happen? I waste somebody's time for a minute or so. Isn't the internet doing that all the time? The PC is misnamed, it isn't a computer, it's a procrastinator, a labour saving device enabling people to waste time without making any special strenuous efforts.

Of course that's double-think. If every website made out that it had content that it didn't have then search engines would be useless. But I always try to stay clear of that. I never make up search strings and I try to offer something, even if it is a joke, whenever possible.

Blonde chick with cute pussy

Are people who are sincerely looking for blonde pussies really going to be satisfied with a photo of a cute pale cat? Maybe not. But any people do tell me in email that they can't remember how they found their way to the site but they are glad they found it. I assume about half of such visitors were probably looking for something they are too embarrassed to admit.

Positive feedback now accounts for the main thrust of the site's on-going promotion activities. A website will not promote itself, at least not very well, some effort has to be put into maintaining a high profile. In a fast moving world not going forwards is pretty much the same thing as going backwards. Pulling strings now alternates with cunning stunts to keep up the flow of new visitors. Without such activities the forum would stagnate from a lack of new members.

The Way of the smoking anchovy

Mother thinks she’s a chicken.

Have you taken her to the doctors?

Well, we would, but we need the eggs.

Welcome to the world of the smoking anchovy. My website has for many years used an unusual technique for developing a flow of curious not to say downright weird visitors. Looking at what people are looking for, telling them what other people are looking for and then laughing up my sleeve.

Strings.

Search strings used by visitors to find the site have developed a kind of feedback loop. Many times I have felt a few pangs at the idea of benefiting from the misguiding of the misguided, but I need the eggs.

A few months ago I took all the search string pages down and the number of visitors the site got fell by over a third and the amount of interesting email dropped even more catastrophically. So I have decided to put the site back on the unique and twisted path it has been on these last few years: the way of the smoking anchovy.

Enjoy.

Feedback loops have been part of the way this site has developed from the early days. It started accidentally when I began to look at the log files that the site generated and noting the crazy stuff that people were searching for. My page The Maggie Simpson Model started to bring in people who were looking for toon porn. My page on eating horses started to bring in people looking for animal porn. My page on the sexual organs of angels brought in people looking for pictures of naked angels and naked sexual organs. My page on the evolution of the appearance of the vulva brought in people looking for pictures of vulvas. My page on big women brought in people looking for pictures of naked fat women. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? The world is full of porn but there is still a demand for more!

Once I started to list the search strings that people had been looking for a really interesting thing happened. Keywords such as naked, porn and so on were being accidentally (and then later not so accidentally) associated with other words, which brought in new and more curious visitors still. Horses and vulvas. The Maggie Simpson page was no longer the centre of the feeding frenzy, it shifted to the page that was listing these strings about Homer Simpson naked with horse vulvas and nuns. Then I started to write pages specifically to attract visitors in and I did so with this process at the forefront of my mind.

I write a page and the search engines deliver up some visitors. The majority of my pages are full of proper and decent content. And there were a few that were not so proper and these generated lots of visitors.

I started to feel guilty that I was pulling people away from other sites. But then again if my site was scoring better for these search strings what had I got to feel guilty about? I can hardly imagine a charity box labelled “down and out pornographer, please give generously” getting many coins shoved in its grubby slot. Then I began to wonder if my site was being penalized for having this apparently adult content on it. I was noticing that Google was not reporting my pages in searches which should have returned my pages prominently. Was this due to people finding my pages were not at all what they were looking for? Or perhaps it was because the pages had too many links. That was the main reason I stripped out all those pages. But a few months on and what has been the result? A big drop in visitors, a big drop in new people on the forum and a big drop in email from religious people telling me how naughty and stupid I am. Also there seems to be no increase in my PageRank. So I have shot myself in the foot. I now have less traffic, which means there is less justification for the site existing at all. The site is meant to be an organ of propaganda and so it should have a very big exposure.

I had a winning formula and I discarded it. The solution seems obvious: go back and do something similar to what I did before. Bring the pages back.

OK. They’re back. I will not be constantly updating them with more material because this process was getting out of hand and taking far too long.


What's all this about?
illegal things in bars | writing in tongues | dream anchovies | farting teletubbies | bride of christ haircut | born again nonsense
naked google | traffic cones for drug dealers | nude wellies | help my tits are too big | parables for unsatisfied people
science speaks in saffron | jesus kicking dogs | invisible pedestrians | satanic clowns | things to avoid on shrooms
virgin with ufo | nude winged cyclist | nazi unicorns | does god have an arsehole | drugs on a string | umbrellas for english monarchy
why don't we kill a lamb when we sin | why suddenly smegma | when puppies kill | vegan girls don't swallow
 
Atheism | Politics | Memes | Mind | Matters | Interact | Feedback | Email | Links | Search | Debate | Home
© 1999 - 2007 by Martin Willett.
mwillett.org: Debate Unlimited