Just poking through my web logs I found some very odd referrers to this blog. Having mentioned the word ‘poker’ a couple of times (there, I’ve done it again) invites hordes of robot spiders from various poker sites pinging the odd page in the hope that I’ll go and look at their sites. Yeah, right. Along with poker sites there are a huge number of loan sites trying to get a look-in. I suppose the train of thought must be ‘he’s a gambling low-life with some debts that need clearing, let’s hope he spends enough of the day sober to go look in his weblogs, see who’s visiting his site and then track back to our site and take a loan out’. That’s what most debt-ridden gamblers spend their extra time doing, I’m sure: visiting referrers to their site.
Even less explicable is the sites selling V|AgrA and it’s various sidekicks. The only connection that I can see with poker is that they’re both common subjects for spam e-mails. The argument seems somewhat circular: people who spam try to push drugs and gambling, here’s a site that mentions gambling, therefore they must want drugs. Either that or there are a high proportion of debt-ridden gamblers looking to consolidate their loans whilst maintaining 36-hour hard-on. There are also a few of those Canadian pharmacies selling weight-loss pills, so we’re building up a picture of a pretty fat gambler here. (Uh-oh – another keyword there. Here comes the spam again…)
Further removed, there’s a link to buy cheap tires using some online coupons. Or something. I didn’t follow that one up. I suppose our fat, debt-ridden gambler who can’t get it up needs to drive somewhere every now and then. Although how they have time to get out of the house what with the gambling and pouring over their logfiles is beyond me.
In the category of less seedy referrers, I can’t think what some people were looking for when they typed a few words into Google and came to this site. Admittedly, for the most part Google gets it pretty spot-on, but there are few times when a blog on a diverse range of subjects can come up against some very unexpected matches. I’m currently ranked seventh for the keywords pope football hungary goalkeeper. What was that person looking for? Which pope was it who played in goal for Hungary? Were they happy with what they found on my site when they got here? To the person who found me third for “what is the best formation in paintballing”, I only hope that my strategies for Medieval Total War helped you in some way. If not, and that person ever comes back to this site for more advice, I can say that the ‘hiding formation’ can often be one of the most successful. And I can’t quite think how someone entered “bbc sport” and came here instead. Surely the BBC site itself would be the natural starting point…