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.