Weird Google searches (part 5)

In the past I've looked at amusingly weird Google searches such as 'Why is Santa fat?' and 'My PC is on fire'.

"I'm not an alco... *hic* alco... *hic*
alcoholic songbird! I'm an alcoholic owl!"

This week's blog post features a slight variation on the theme. Instead of looking at intentionally weird Google searches, this week I take a look at a selection of perfectly normal search terms which some internet users didn't quite type correctly.

1) To Kill A Mockingbird

There's nothing weird about searching for To Kill A Mockingbird, and in fact it's a very popular search term with an average of 450,000 searches per month.

Not quite as popular, but still clocking in with a rather impressive 12,100 searches per month, is the search term 'Tequila Mockingbird', presumably from readers who obviously think the book is about an alcoholic songbird! Apparently, a significant number of readers also seem to think the book is an instruction manual, judging by the 27,100 searches each month for 'How To Kill A Mockingbird'.

The Fudgemuffin search engine

This week the Charles Fudgemuffin blog has an exciting new announcement. I'm launching my own search engine!

After carefully considering what to name it, I eventually decided to name it after myself ... Fudgemuffin!

The 'Fudgemuffin' search engine.

Business ideas such as this one cost a considerable sum of money to get up and running, but I've got a lot of confidence in this venture. I've therefore invested several thousand pounds into the project, so hopefully it goes well.

The 'Fudgemuffin' search engine has only been up and running for a short time, so obviously as you'd expect the traffic volume has been fairly small so far. However, Google also started small, and look where they are today!

The weird and wonderful world of Google

It's incredible to think that as recently as 1997, Google didn't even exist! Nowadays pretty much everyone has heard of Google, so this week the Charles Fudgemuffin blog takes a look at the weird and wonderful world of Google!

1) Strange maths

To start things off, here's one question where I'm not convinced that Google is telling the truth...

A surprisingly heavy pound of water!

According to Google, a pound a water weighs 8.36 pounds!

Weird Google searches (part 4)

A few weeks ago in my 'Things that happen every second' article, I mentioned the weird Google search term...

'Dinosaurs were made up by the CIA to discourage time travel'

...which incredibly, gets 20 searches every month!

There are many more weird Google searches made every month, so here are a few more, starting with one search which makes me agree with Einstein that stupidity has no bounds...

1) "My PC is on fire"

...30 searches per month

Surprisingly, I didn't have a photo of a computer on fire,
so here are two separate photos of a computer and fire.

I can only say .... er, what!?  Presumably the people googling 'My PC is on fire' subsequently searched for...

'How do I treat burnt fingers?'

Being serious, if my laptop was on fire my first thought wouldn't be, 'Hmm, how I can put out the fire?  I know!  I'll google it!  Using my laptop that's on fire!'

If it was then presumably my next thought would be, 'Ow!  Ow!  Ouch!  That's hot!'

Funny Google predictions quiz

Killer apples, pregnant men and bra wearing sons...

The world.
Find out how to save it with Google search.

One clever feature of Google Search is that Google learns from previous searches, and then uses this information to create its 'auto-complete' feature. This means that when you start typing a search term, Google will offer predictive suggestions of what it thinks you're about to type.

For example, if you type 'How To Save The', Google will offer predictive suggestions such as:

How To Save The World
How To Save The Rainforest
How To Save The Environment

Most of the time the auto-complete predictions are quite logical. However, on a few occasions they can be quite unexpectedly bizarre, so this week I've decided to highlight a few of these surprising Google suggestions in the form of a quiz.

Strange Google searches (part 3)

Hitmen, Three Legged Dogs And Pregnant Men

Searching for a hitman.

A few months ago I published a post called 'Santa Claus, camper vans and Swedish girls' which discussed some of the weird searches made on Google every month. I then followed this up over Christmas with a post devoted entirely to Santa related searches on Google. As there are hundreds of weird Google searches made every month I thought it was time for another post along the same theme.

1) I’ll start off with a rather worrying search term.  This one is especially worrying when you consider that it gets 9,900 worldwide searches per month:

‘How do I hire a hitman?’

Even more worrying is the fact that this search term has a competition rating of 0.05* so whilst by no means the most competitive search term on Google, there nevertheless must be some businesses looking to advertise on this search term! What sort of businesses they might be I dread to think.

* Google assign all of their search terms a competition rating to allow advertisers to assess which search terms are the most popular with other advertisers and therefore the most competitive to advertise against.

Searching for Santa on Google

The curious nature of kids when using Google to investigate Santa.

Santa taking a well deserved break
from his present delivering duties.

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that as well as the Google search engine, Google also have a service known as the Google Keyword Tool which allows you to analyse how many searches a particular search term gets on Google every month.

Some of the search terms I discussed were the search term, ‘Is Santa real?’, which gets 301,000 searches every month from quizzical and possibly sceptical kids, and also, ‘What is Santa’s real phone number?’, which gets 320 searches per month.

As it’s only a few days until Christmas I therefore thought this would be an appropriate time to feature another post on Santa related searches on Google.

The most popular Santa themed Google search I could find was the massively popular, ‘Where is Santa at?’, which gets an incredible 83,100,000 searches every month. By comparison the search term, ‘What’s the true meaning of Christmas?’, gets a paltry 170 searches per month, so it’s nice to know that modern kids seem to have their priorities straight!