…and this is a 
Matt asks a weird question: he's wondering who is the target of the sickest web searches. I should recuse myself, because I thought I got no perverts searching for me: after all, I think searching for "sex with a spider" or "penis tentacles" is perfectly normal. But I took a look at the search terms anyway, and I was appalled—there actually are several very common phrases people use to find their way here that I find objectionable.
Right there near the top of the list of search phrases there's this one:
PZ Meyers
Aaacck! Then, a little further down:
PZ Meyer
Jebus. Philistines.
PZ Meier
Not even close, man. Look, it's not hard: there is one true spelling of the name.
PZ Myers
It's even easier than that. If you just type "PZ" into google, this site is the first entry.
Comments
Posted by: Evolving Squid | June 17, 2007 11:31 PM
A little game that my friends and I play when we're bored (ok alcohol is often involved too) is this: enter as into the google search box all of a fruit, a power tool, and sex. Be sure to add the + in front of each one (and appropriate quotes if it's a multi-word name like "star fruit"). The idea is to stump google. So, for example:
+"star fruit" +chainsaw +sex +pomegranite +"pneumatic nail driver" +sex +kumquat +"drill press" +sex
Sometimes we visit a few of the links, just in case someone is looking at the search terms that bring readers to their page :)
Posted by: Evolving Squid | June 17, 2007 11:33 PM
Apparently a less-than/hyphen/hypen combination gets eaten.
+"star fruit" +chainsaw +sex gives 129 hits
+pomegranite +"pneumatic nail driver" +sex stumps google
+kumquat +"drill press" +sex gives 26 hits
That's what it was supposed to say.
Posted by: O | June 17, 2007 11:37 PM
Try spelling "pomegranate" correctly and see what you get.
Posted by: anon | June 17, 2007 11:49 PM
One of the nice things about disabling referrer generation (about:config -> network.http.sendRefererHeader -> modify -> 0) is that website owners don't get to see just what I searched for. :)
Posted by: Feshy | June 17, 2007 11:50 PM
I too mis-typed the name when searching and eating a sandwich at the same type. I mistakenly searched for Myars, and came up empty. I eventually realized I needed the 'e'. I put down my sandwich and typed it properly, and got results. That is to say, I eventually found Myarse, but it took both hands.
Posted by: anon | June 17, 2007 11:52 PM
Count your luck no one searched for 'Harriet Miers sex' and wound up here.
Eyewash station by the door.
Posted by: Evil_Mage_Ra | June 17, 2007 11:57 PM
Incidentally, a search for "PZ Myarse" returns two hits. :)
Posted by: EMR | June 17, 2007 11:59 PM
Without the quotes, that is.
Posted by: Christian Burnham | June 18, 2007 12:03 AM
According to Google Trends,
Pakistan is #1 for people searching 'goat sex'
http://www.google.com/trends?q=goat+sex+++
and Ireland is #1 for people searching 'sheep sex'
http://www.google.com/trends?q=sheep+sex+++&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
Posted by: Oran_Taran | June 18, 2007 12:03 AM
Wow, I didn't know you could block people from seeing what you searched. Thanks for the tip anon!
Anyone know how to stop sites from "knowing" you visited them, from where, when, how long you stayed, etc? I just put a bunch of them in my hosts file, but there are a bunch of tracking sites out there. Maybe there is some about:config type of fix?
Posted by: arachnophilia | June 18, 2007 12:16 AM
that's not what it means i swear!
Posted by: llewelly | June 18, 2007 12:18 AM
PZ Meier?? Any relation to Billy Meier , space case extrodinaire?
Posted by: Graculus | June 18, 2007 12:21 AM
Anyone know how to stop sites from "knowing" you visited them, from where, when, how long you stayed, etc? I just put a bunch of them in my hosts file, but there are a bunch of tracking sites out there. Maybe there is some about:config type of fix?
Options > Privacy > Cookies will allow you to mess with how you handle cookies. Why on earth would you do it through your hosts file?
If you don't give a website an IP then they can't send anything to you. You can use a proxy, it doesn't have to be your own IP.
Posted by: Sarcastro | June 18, 2007 12:34 AM
Try playing Google Sepeku sometime. Just get a kanji font and copy random charcters into the search field and hit the first link that comes up.
First person that finds something that makes them want to poke their eyes out with a fork loses.
Posted by: Graculus | June 18, 2007 12:38 AM
Google Sepeku
I think I'll stick to Newfie Roulette... I've *seen* some of that stuff.
Posted by: John Scanlon | June 18, 2007 12:49 AM
@ Feshy: That's the best laugh I've had for weeks, thanks.
Posted by: Christopher Rhoda | June 18, 2007 12:58 AM
The real challenge is Google Whacking: http://www.googlewhack.com/
You try to find Google searches that only return one result, and it's tougher than it sounds. I cam up with about 10 when I used to be into it...
Posted by: Hans | June 18, 2007 1:00 AM
That's got to win an award of some kind.Posted by: Brain Hertz | June 18, 2007 1:14 AM
Damn... I'm still trying to clean Merlot out of my nose...
Posted by: Zeno | June 18, 2007 1:18 AM
The search terms that most frequently bring people to my blog are "spanking" (because I titled a post "Spanking Creationists") and "Nikki Zeno" or "naked Nikki Zeno" (because I mentioned this sexy model and said I wouldn't be posting naked pictures of her and, no, my blog had nothing to do with her).
I feel dirty, of course.
Posted by: AL | June 18, 2007 1:20 AM
So either nobody stumbles upon your site by using terms such as "Intelligent Design" or "Creationism," else you aren't bothered by these searches?
Posted by: Brownian | June 18, 2007 1:30 AM
Gosh, I wonder what PZ would think if he knew we Canadians refer to him as Pee Zed.
Posted by: Louis | June 18, 2007 1:51 AM
Whoa. Pakistan is also first for horse donkey dog cat cow monkey and bird sex.
Posted by: Shawn Wilkinson | June 18, 2007 2:01 AM
If I'm at a new computer (say, school library), I usually google pharyngula. It's easier, in my opinion.
Posted by: Monado | June 18, 2007 2:17 AM
or "Friday Cephalopod"
...actually, PZ gave me my most recent google-whacking term:
"define:bloviate" returns one response.
Posted by: Greta Christina | June 18, 2007 2:38 AM
"The search terms that most frequently bring people to my blog are 'spanking' (because I titled a post 'Spanking Creationists)..."
Damn, Zeno. I thought for sure your link was going to be about Christian Domestic Discipline.
I swear to Dog. Spanking creationists. (Or spanking fundamentalists, anyway.)
And the weirdest search terms that I get on a regular basis is probably "Fred Flintstone having sex." (About which I have never, ever written.) I had no idea so many people were interested in Fred Flintstone having sex. (Unless it's the same person searching over and over again...)
Posted by: Jessica Guilford | June 18, 2007 2:42 AM
I get the occasional "methods for deflowering a virgin" search because I had a post where I talked about "secondary virginity" (also known as the "Once, Twice, Three Times a Virgin" school of abstinence). It creeps me out a little.
Also, way more people want to see the lyrics for "I'm Too Sexy" (Right Said Fred, 1991ish) translated into other languages than you would think.
Posted by: Thony C. | June 18, 2007 3:10 AM
Has anybody ever tried PZ Dairy-Farmer?
Posted by: synthesist | June 18, 2007 3:17 AM
Milton Keynes is 4th on the list for horse sex !? - must be all the roundabouts making the locals dizzy - research project anybody ?
Posted by: bernarda | June 18, 2007 3:33 AM
Louis, did you notice that after Pakistan for "horse sex" there is a slew of Eastern European countries. I wonder what that means.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | June 18, 2007 5:25 AM
Judging from the posts that bloggers put up about this sort of thing, I reckon Shakesville gets the weirdest referrals. Assuming you don't consider "cephalopod sex" weird, of course.
Posted by: Paul A | June 18, 2007 5:34 AM
Google have a tool that lets you type in a word or phrase and see what related search phrases people are actually searching for. Entering "tentacle" throws up precious few squid-related searches; "tentacles in girls" was far more typical!
I work at a search marketing agency at the moment (yeah, I know, it pays the bills though) and have to use this tool a lot for client research. Suffice to say that when I did some work for a UK children's charity the keywords which arose relating to abuse, etc. made for the grimmest day of my life...
Posted by: Bryce | June 18, 2007 5:43 AM
sex with spider: http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/KF/French_AIDS_posters.jpg
Posted by: Greta Christina | June 18, 2007 6:03 AM
"Also, way more people want to see the lyrics for "I'm Too Sexy" (Right Said Fred, 1991ish) translated into other languages than you would think."
Well, duh. I mean, who wouldn't want that? :-)
Posted by: Wm Annis | June 18, 2007 8:24 AM
On my ancient Greek poetry web site I have a page explaining some of the oddities of the dialect of Sappho and Alcaeus. Of course this dialect is called "Lesbian Aeolic." I have a steady stream of visitors to that page who are -- I assume from the search strings -- looking for "lesbian" covering a rather different semantic range.
There aren't too many of these visitors. What stuns me is that, considering what they're looking for, they visit me at all. The google summary makes it perfectly clear I'm talking about Sappho's language.
I harbor fantasies that someone that started out looking for lesbian porn will be turned on to ancient Greek because of me.
Posted by: Shevon | June 18, 2007 8:42 AM
"penis tentacles" - I bet that person was looking for a certain Japanese anime film.
Posted by: xebecs | June 18, 2007 8:42 AM
Or perhaps, ala Mel Gibson in Apocalyptico, create lesbian porn with dialog in ancient Greek?
I know, it should not be possible in this universe to create a sentence including the phrases "lesbian porn" and "Mel Gibson". But there, I've done it twice now...
Posted by: JJ ross | June 18, 2007 9:18 AM
"Horse smegma" somehow made this homeschool mom's blog popular with Googling strangers and puzzled her mightily. Finally she wrote a general post to what she called in later comments the "smegma people" at her peephole . . .
Posted by: Inoculated Mind | June 18, 2007 10:41 AM
http://www.inoculatedmind.com/?p=190 I found a few doozies.
Posted by: AJ Milne | June 18, 2007 11:29 AM
Through my provider's visit/search tracking stuff, I discovered that 'trampling', apparently, is a fetish. It's one of the search terms that sporadically brings people to my blog...
No, the post to which the search engines direct them (title is 'Trampling history') probably isn't particularly satisfactory to those searching for material to feed their fetish...
Well. So far as I know. At least, none of them have yet written me to thank me or anything.
Also, I get occasional visits from horny people who can't type... thanks to my 'Flim flam' category, I get a few visitors who are searching for a 'sex flim', every month, without fail.
Posted by: Bob O'H | June 18, 2007 12:35 PM
PZ, you should be more careful. Don't you know that if John Wilkins ever spells your name correctly, the universe will end?
Bob
Posted by: factician | June 18, 2007 12:35 PM
I did a post once about a guy who had killed his child (shaken baby syndrome) and was blaming mercury in vaccines. That explains this search:
"want to hurt your baby"
Posted by: Gelf | June 18, 2007 12:36 PM
Look, it's not hard: there is one true spelling of the name. PZ Myers
Ah, but is it Zee or Zed? I mean, it's perfectly normal for young people to experiment with the Queen's English at some time in their lives, but here you are, an established and respected professor, and if the right biologist comes along, you're still all too eager to swing Zed.
Posted by: anon | June 18, 2007 2:09 PM
That phrasing implies there is only one. There are definitly a lot more than one.
Posted by: Glenn | June 18, 2007 2:18 PM
That's nothing. I found out this weekend that my caller ID was getting my name wrong.
Posted by: Ribozyme | June 18, 2007 7:12 PM
I just typed "tentacle" on the Google toolbar on my IE, and the "guess" that appeared in second (right after "tentacles") was "tentacle rape"... Is that also common in anime?
Posted by: khan | June 18, 2007 9:58 PM
One of my favorite statements about the internet:
(from the late great Rich Jeni)
Posted by: Keith Douglas | June 19, 2007 7:11 PM
re: Pakistan. Does Pakistan have a country-level net.filter, like China?
Posted by: arachnophilia | June 20, 2007 3:14 AM
@Christopher Rhoda: (#17)
oh yes, i used to play that. i found a few good ones, listed them online, and promptly lost them.