Septembarrrrr 19th

Ahoy Mateys it be Talk Like a Pirate Day in lands here and across the seven seas.

Not long ago I was asked on Facebook to make a huge decision. A decision with consequences. I was asked to vote... Pirates or Ninjas?

Fast forward to today. With pirates on my mind this important day, I think back to that decision and once again ask myself, what are we searching for? Pirates or Ninjas?

You can see from the graph that while Ninjas have their place, in the world of web searching, that place is near the bottom. I thought Captain Jack Sparrow might have an influence in these stats, but it seems more than Capt. Jack is at work here. The pirates make the ninjas walk the plank from the beginning of our measured time.

So now it's your turn land lubber... Who arrrr you searching for? Pirates or Ninjas?

Misspelling Bee

Today's death match is near and dear to me.

Literally.

I live near the Smoky Mountains, so I see the misspellings of S-M-O-K-Y all the time. In fact, I've come to expect it. But I don't have to like it.

Just to be sure we're all together, here's a picture of the welcome sign:

There is no E in Smoky. And yet we see that a sizable percentage of searchers include the E. That's the most common error, but just for fun I decided to see if there are any more. Here's a list:

Smoky - Good

Smokey - Bad

Smokee - Bad

Smokie - Bad

Thankfully these others get little traffic. Could we be making some progress?

Now the question "Why would they keep doing this if it's not spelled that way?" begs to be asked. Well, my amateur opinion is there are many websites that misspell it too. So we have a loop of misspellings finding misspellings that feeds on itself. In essence the "I found it like that so it must be right" thing takes over.

I'm sure this is not the only case. Do you have a similar situation? Let me know and I'll do what I can to help you expose your favorite abuse too.

Elephants Never Forget, and Don't Seem to Search Much Either

Regular readers of this experiment will remember a few days ago we matched up the two Democratic front-runners in a battle to the death. Today we have two front-runners from the other side of the aisle.

And just as we think of these two Republicans being the opposite of the Democrats, so too we find the web traffic the opposite. If you remember (and if you don't here it is) the searching was fast and furious for our Democratic counterparts. Indeed it was back and forth with only the voters knowing the outcome.

With Republicans? Not so much. As you can see the link is almost flat, dead, until recently when some rumbling began about the possibility of Fred Thompson running. I think Rudy got a boost from that as both trends rise at roughly the same time. With Rudy already out there, and lots of buzz speculating about Fred, we see that Fred has ridden this close-to-the-vest strategy to roundly stomp Mr. Giuliani in the web search department.

Will this continue through to the end? Only you, the voter, can control that one. I think it will probably flatten out and get closer as the end nears. I think they'll all be more fun as we go.

Can You Search Me Now?

Having recently re-upped a cell phone contract I was thinking about cell phone competition. Competition for web searches that is.

So I pitted two biggies (one my provider) against each other. In this death match we have Verizon vs. Cingular. And with the recent purchase (and un-branding) of Cingular by AT&T, we threw that in for fun.

The results are easy to see. Verizon is the big talker. Even as the iPhone was hitting shelves (for AT&T), Verizon sees a bump in traffic. Very interesting.

Even going back to early 2004 Cingular makes a good showing, holding its own, but never can reach the level of search time that Verizon receives. Add in the new AT&T branding and the iPhone and you get a slight bounce around the iPhone launch.

Finally I noticed something strange... AT&T has removed the Cingular brand, but it's plain to see that Cingular was stomping AT&T on web search traffic. Hmmm... I didn't like the removal of the Cingular brand in the beginning and I like it less now. Why would you remove a brand that gets more web traffic?

Oh well, I'm sure Verizon's thrilled.

Tight Battle of Radio Alternatives

My wife works in radio and there is lots of chatter about alternatives to traditional radio. One of the biggest competitors in recent years is satellite radio and the two players are of course XM and Sirius.

Each has spent time in the news and each has done deals with different groups for content and unique programming. But let's face it, unless one or the other has something you specifically want to hear, they're mostly the same. Would you expect that to make this a close race?

Boy does it!! Look at those lines. Almost the same across the entire range. Of the death matches we've done to this point, this is the closest I've seen. I'm going to have to call this a draw as I can't see a true winner. I guess when one buys the other, that's all we'll have left to search for and we'll have the champ.

Kids Rule, Flynt Drools

I'm working on a family vacation for this fall to Disney World. Thoughts of Disney dancing in my head. Naturally anything on my mind becomes a potential web search death match.

My opinion? A good death match opponent for Disney would be some anti-Disney. Some organization so opposite that a head-to-head would create some interest. After some thought, Hustler came to mind. Yep, ole Flynt's bastion of porn. I can't think of many orgs that could be that anti-Disney, so it's on like Shere Khan.

Now, before anyone starts crying, I realize this isn't quite a fair fight. But (1) online porn is big and (2) I tried to find in the death match manual where a fight had to be fair. It's not there.

So we have the kids of America roundly spanking the babes of Larry Flynt. I guess the overall win wasn't unexpected, but the gap in traffic is surprising for me. I thought the online porn industry would at least make it a closer race.

Pole Dance

OK, the title is a teaser of sorts. Sorry to disappoint some of you.

What we're about today is the top versus the bottom. Of the world that is. The North Pole vs. the South Pole. It seems the top of the world has the upper hand in this one. Although I'm not completely surprised by this, I did think the environmental aspects, and the penguins marching, might make it closer than it is.

What we find is a flat line for the south pole and a higher, and spikey, line for the north pole. And big shocker here - the spikes are at the end of the year. Right around the time Santa is getting geared up for the late night toy run.

If anyone wants to setup a Santa blog and skim some of this end-of-year search traffic, be my guest. Just mention you got the idea from right here.