Searches…
Ever since I posted my review of Dirt Greed & Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and Their Implications for Today, several times now I had people find my blog for searching for the word “sex.”
Now that is disturbing to me. A search in google will turn up an ever growing 939,000,000 hits for that word.
I can guarantee that my book review does not even come close to the first 100 pages. That means there are multiple people who are going through page after page of search hits for the word “sex.”
I really don’t know what to do with that. I’m rather disgusted right now.
You just mentioned the word sex three more times. If Mr. Driscoll has a blog I wonder how many hits his site gets.
scripturezealot
March 2, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Jeff, I laughed out loud when I read your comment!
Mike
March 2, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Actually, if they’re using safesearch or some other filter to remove anything that’s euphemistically called “not safe for work”, then your post is probably much closer to the top. Google ranks blogs much higher than they deserve, largely because people link to blogs from other blogs, and a link is worth more to them if it comes from a site that’s highly-linked. Blogs thus have this bootstrapping element in Google, and newer posts that have links from the front page of a blog end up higher than older posts.
It’s also possible that someone is doing genuine research, doesn’t know how to use multiple keywords, and thus had to start way down the list to avoid stuff that wouldn’t help.
I don’t see a link to your sitemeter on your front page, so I can’t check myself, but you it actually provides you with the exact link to the search that people came from, so you can see how far down the list it is by seeing what page of the search it’s on.
Jeremy Pierce
March 3, 2008 at 7:03 am
Well, even with the strictest search settings, there are still over 60 million hits on google. I checked the first ten pages – I’m not there. But you made a good suggestion, thanks.
Mike
March 3, 2008 at 10:57 am
I was thinking about this last night and had two thoughts. One is sex in itself isn’t a bad thing. The other is that if people are searching for sex in a bad way and they come across your blog maybe God’s word will go out to them.
Plus it caused me to go and read the review. For some reason I didn’t the first time around, maybe because I’m not interested in that particular book. But the review is great and I learned some things about interpretation from you.
scripturezealot
March 3, 2008 at 2:10 pm
You’re right. It isn’t a bad thing. I just have this image in my head of hormone driven teenagers doing internet searches…
Mike
March 3, 2008 at 4:22 pm