One of the features that drew me to WordPress was the ability to monitor traffic really well and see how individuals (if any) were finding my blog. Possibly the coolest aspect of this is that I’m able to see any google searches that lead to clickthroughs to entries. I’ve only had a few thus far, but the best search was this one on [May xx]:
forget things of the past how
The word order makes it sound like an encylopedia entry: “Forgetting things of the past, how to.” It’s oddly poetic in how calculated the phrasing is, but behind the search lies someone obviously in pain.
It reminded me of an incident two years ago when AOL accidentally leaked over half a million users’ search queries. With each of the queries assigned a number linking it to a specific user, one was able to tell a little about the user. An example, from this article: “[There are] a dozen lines from the 8,200 queries made by user #23187425, all of which seem to be a sort of conversation this person was having with the search engine–he or she never actually clicked on any links but just kept querying with plaintive phrases like ‘i have had trouble,’ ‘i want to change,’ and ‘i know who i am.’”
The search box becomes (mostly) anonymous confessional, a way to expel thoughts into the world without the world actually knowing. The digital equivalent of screaming into one’s pillow. A new kind of relationship in the internet age. «»
