One of the minor pleasures of running a website is watching your pages climb the rankings of the various search engines, and coming to understand the ways - sometimes unexpected or downright bizarre - in which surfers reach your site.
Among the more flattering ways people get here is from Wikipedia, from articles including the following:
Crown of sonnets
Good King Wenceslas
Good King Wenceslas (in Wikipedia's Japanese
edition)
Luc Bat
Masculine rhyme
Ottava rima
Sestina
Song That Luc Bat
More links from Wikipedia would be most welcome! Do please feel free to add them.
More curiously, be advised that various pages on this site have recently held the following rankings:
1 on both Google.com and
Google UK for verse forms
1 on Yahoo for kinds
of rhyme
1 on both Google.com
and
Google Denmark for
rondeau redouble
1 on Google.com for
rubai
1 on Google.com for
luc bat
1 on Google.com for
double sestina
1 on Google.com for
haiku hq
1 on MSN for englyn
1 on Google Poland for
tail rhyme
1 on Google UK for
printers devilry
1 on Google Australia
for tessellating the polyominoes
1 on Yahoo for how
many feet in a metre
1 on Google Russia for Ogden Nash inch metre
1 on Google.com for
Muyaka bin Haji al-Ghassaniy
1 on Google UK for rain
falls on the just and the unjust
1 on Google Denmark
for beware of damsels in distress
1 on Google Germany
for sun shines from every orifice
1 (of only 4) on Google UK for
to porringe
1 on Google UK for queer
my pitch
1 on Google.com for girl's
bosom hq
This search also turned up a fascinating "Guide to
Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual Moments in Doctor Who".
1 on Google.com for hot wild brown black girls
This surfer may have been disappointed to reach my Hemingway parody.
1 on Google UK for do
not sleep sober or alone
1 on Google UK for chewing
bits of string
1 on Yahoo for advert
for an airline
1 on Google Brazil for
the woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads
1 on Google Malaysia
for herriot watts reservoir engineering
1 on Google UK
for differentiate under the integral sign
1 on AOL for Shakespeare's
witches names
1 on Google.com for
what witches think about double crystals
1 on Google Germany,
Google France and Google Colombia
for
crazed nipples
2 on Google.com for rhyme
royal
2 on Google China for
mirror rhyme
2 on Excite for rhyme
guide
2 on Google Hungary
for Google Hungary
(and this was the very page they found)
2 on Google UK for dry
felting verse wet felting
(I think "versus" was meant here, and this person was looking
for information about techniques for making pictures from coloured wool.)
2 on Google.com for
jentacular
2 on Google.com for
how to use legal adverbs like hereinafter correctly
2 on Google.com for
buxom slender
2 on Google Australia
for
wild liveware
2 on Google Canada
for if you smell bananas
2
on MSN
for
williams shakespeare when was he born till he died
(!)
2 on Google.com for
have a bash with ogden nash
2 on Google.com for
words stoat shakespeare
(and the first that is not obscene)
2 on Google Italy for
hot madrid girl (behind a page with info about Las
Palmas brothels)
2 on Google Finland
for las palmas brothels (since the previous line was
added to this page!)
2 on Google UK for poems
about hereward the wake
2 on Google UK for eskimo
love poem
3 on both Google.com
and AOL for ballade
3 on Google Canada
for villanelle
3 on Google UK for rondeau
3 on MSN for sonnet
(and the first that is about poetry)
3 on Google Egypt for naga
uta syllabic structure
3 on Google Mexico for
rubaiyat of omar khayyam presented by elf
3 on Google Belgium
for
taliped decanus
3 on Google Canada for
robaczek swietojanski
(which is the Polish for "glow-worm")
3 on Google Sweden for than-bauk
3 on AOL for words
that rhyme with done
3 on Google Germany
for
friends of Abidjan zoo
3 on Google UK for microsoft
vole history
3 on Google UK for wild
gardening movement
3 on Google.com for
14 line sonnets about things (presumably this surfer
already had information on sonnets of other lengths that were about nothing at
all)
4 on Google South Africa
for broken rhyme
4 on Google Denmark
for eye rhyme
4 on Google Hungary
for masculine rhyme
4 on Google Vietnam
for luc bat
4 on Google Romania
for undead alphabet
4 on Google Hong Kong
for possessive gerund archaic
4 on Google.com for squaring
the square
4 on Google.com for
standard form for writing a will
4 on Google Mauritius for economics for beginners
4 on Google New Zealand
for insulting poems for your boyfriends
4 on Google India for beautiful
poems for your luv
4 on MSN for scoter
girls
(the surfer may have meant "scooter", but I didn't)
4 on Google.com for hot
girl belch
4 on Google Israel
and Google China
for crazed nipples
5 on Google.com for pantoum
5 on Google UK for cynghanedd
(and three of the ones in front are in Welsh)
5 on Google Thailand for กวี (what?)
5 on Google UK for deli's
in Clapham (despite the naff apostrophe)
5 on Google UK for cereal box religion is a smile from
5 on Yahoo Taiwan for go
around the barn at high noon
5 on Google.com for something
that rhymes with purple
5 on Google.com for a
sentence with plausible in it
5 on Google.com for bonk
poland
5 on Google Italy for crazed
nipples
5 on Google.com for
recipe for summoning up the devil
6 on Google Trinidad and
Tobago for metre
6 on Google.com for Dum di-di dum dum
("Did you mean: dum didi dum dum",
asks Google)
6 on Google Spain for crotels
6 on Google India for thumb
painting
6 on MSN for archie
and strict baptists
7 on Google.com for football
villanelle poems
7 on Google.com for hortative
subjunctive
7 on Google Germany
for difficult to conjugate german words
7 on MSN New Zealand
for Gujurati baby names
8 on Google
Canada for sonnet form
8 on Google Japan for rundreim
8 on Google UK for Ogden
Nash
8 on Google Germany
for percy bish shelly poems
8 on Google
Canada for virelai par deschamps
8 on Google.com for
higher pantheism in a nutshell
8 on Google India for
marathi poems on animals
8 on Google Philippines
for children's poetry in tagalog
8 on Google Egypt for words
liable to be confused
only 9 on Google India for
bina
(despite having invented the form myself)
9 on Google Russia for what
is ivan franko l'viv national university famous for
9 on Starware for flaming
skillet
9 on MSN for dum
stuff
9 on Google Turkey for you
vole
9 on Google.com
for where does piccalilli come from?
10 on Google.com
for roundelay
10 on AltaVista for
villanelle
10 on Yahoo Hong Kong
for verse vs poem
10 on Google Vietnam
for dare to strike
10 on Google UK for what
is a vole
10 on Google UK for honey
trap recipes
10 on Google UK for Victoria
Longley naked
11 on Google UK for nude caravanning
18 on Google.com for iambic pentameter
32 on Google.com for cinquain (aaagh!)
33 on Google Italy for Polish vocabulary
46 on Google Australia for animated devil
81 on Google Sweden for links gay brothels
137 on Google UK for black ants
162 on Google UK for conversazione - so presumably on the 17th page, this surfer finally found what (s)he was looking for.
180 on emachines for a soldier known unto god
As used to say, there will be more of this.
PS You can prove anything with statistics... Based on the numbers of hits I get, the biggest 5 countries in the world must be USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and... wait for it... Singapore!
This page last edited 22/12/2007