The Categories

Category	January Count	November Count
Technology	221	191
Billy Joel	110	237
DSL	52	29
Celebrity Look Alikes	38	49
Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree	21	97
Adult/Porn-Related	19	149
Cal/Stanford	19	25
Politics	16	8
Penn	15	6
Hava Nagila	12	0
Overrated Films	10	18
The Simpsons	11	0
TicTacs	0	14

Queries were down slightly this month (662 vs. 783). Billy Joel, who had taken the lead in November (the last time I compiled these stats), has fallen back to a comfortable #2 slot, behind the almighty Technology related queries (why don't I write about technology more?), and queries about DSL modems in particular surged almost 80% to 52. Queries about the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree seem to have abated (as expected), and Adult/Porn related queries have also dropped off dramatically (almost 90% to a mere 19). The big winners this month were politics (duh...), Hava Nagila (a top ten pop hit in Britain now) and The Simpsons (two posts in a row!).

The Referring Sites

This month's referring site of the month award goes to CNN.com, who linked to one of my political blog entries via their "Sphere" service.

My only attempt at self-promotion this month was to send my Penn-related Simpsons post to IvygateBlog, who summarily ignored it, choosing instead to show pictures of Kevin Bacon playing ping pong in the frat house he helped immortalize via Animal House. So a big "What am I, chopped liver?" to the folks at IvyGateBlog.

The Keywords

All told, 662 queries resulted in hits to Familygreenberg.com in January (121 less than were used in Novemberr). Here are some of the more entertaining samples:

We start with Technology, this month's leader in ISBS queries:

Query	Rank / # of Results	Comments
boot camp how to switch back to osx, how to switch back from windows on bootcamp	>500 / 310,000, >500 / 458,000	A perfectionally reasonable thing to Google, but the image of a Mac owner stuck in Windows with no idea how to get back to the Mac OS just makes me laugh
excel makro create table	3 / 990,000	I've said it before and I'll say it again: "I Should Be Sleeping: catering to bad spellers since 2005"
numerical format not acknowledged in lotus 123	28 / 10,900	It is well known that the eventual downfall of Lotus 123 was it's inability to handle numbers.
usb wine	>500 / 703,000	Ah yes, wine. A lovely complement to a fine meal and a kick-ass USB peripheral. Just try to get the keyboard wet...
ie smooth scrolling not smooth enough	25 / 516,000	What you need is the ironing add-on. Works wonders for smoothing out the scrolling...

And here are some of the just plain weird ones:

Query	Rank / # of Results	Comments
"beatles" "calculator icon"	9 / 34	I honestly have no idea what this guy was even looking for.
yakov smirnoff intel	18 / 1,620	Same thing here - what could he possibly have been looking for...
dealornodeal	>500 / 86,500	An interesting approach to playing the game. I know people used to use Google for Who Wants to be a Millionaire, but I don't know if it's as helpful for this one.
flamingos threatened	>500 / 230,000	OK, you dirty birds, put your legs where I can see 'em. Both of 'em! Do as I say or I'll turn that pink into a darker shade of red. Catch my drift?
graphs and chart on family planning in pakistan 2007	46 / 167,000	It's good to see responsible Pakistanis doing such careful planning before starting a family.
hanson update	15 / 481,000	Evidence that the Hanson brothers' mom uses Google. After all, who else...
irish marching bands, levittown,pa.	19 / 772	Yes, that's right. 772 results. You should see Levittown's St. Patrick's Day parade...
is brian greenberg nice?	23 / 382,000	As Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up." If you're still out there, please allow me to say I certainly hope I am!
saint valentines day sexist nonsense	29 / 16,600	Ironic. This guy (and yes, it has to be a guy) googled in January, and I posted this in February.
"self destructing scaffold"	2 / 2	Well, that sounds like quite the design flaw, no?

And finally, the Adult/Porn-Related queries. As I said above, pickings were slim this month, so I had to expand my definition of "Adult" to include alcohol as well as sex. Here you go:

Query	Rank / # of Results	Comments
anheuser busch powerpoint templates	6 / 1,770	The technical approach to getting wasted.
drunks	>500 / 4,870,000	The simpler approach (although, I'll note, he's still using Google...)
brothel + poland	>500 / 128,000	Hey, cool - the hotel has free Wifi. We'll use the internet to find things to do here in Warsaw...
does ashley tisdale sleep naked	>500 / 173,000	Oh, come on people - she's in Disney movies, for pete's sake...
pitchers of nude people	>500 / 150,000	Three possibilities here: 1) another bad speller, 2) someone's got an awfully huge pitcher lying around, or 3) Jeffrey Dahmer's been Googling again...
selma hayek + porn look alike	>500 / 73,700	Your favorite celebrity doesn't take her clothes off often enough for you? Go find someone who looks like her and does. Ya gotta admit, there's an element of sheer genius here...