Once a month or so, I comb through the server logs. Among other things, I look at the phrases or keywords which people enter on my blog or into search engines that drive them to my little spot on the web.

After carefully considering all that people search for, I have to reach the conclusion that the web is irrevocably broken.

Here is a selection of the terms people are searching for.

Search: query for 'Marsupial'
Search: query for 'POOR PEOPLE PHOTOES STRUGGLING FOR FOOD'
Search: query for '99 Luft Balloons'
Search: query for 'WHAT IS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY'

hiking in panties
cute pictures i m a little teapot
egg shells for sale
top ten things president theodore roosevelt accomplished

My little corner of the web is so far removed from being an authoritative source of information on any of those topics, that it’s laughable. I must admit that some of the search terms which I didn’t list do map more neatly on to actual content that I provide. I still don’t think I should be the #1 hit on google for the phrase “hiker cuts limb off”.

It’s interesting that the vision of a semantic web put forward by the good folks at W3C doesn’t seem like it has much traction. However, searching the web as a collection of unstructured data seems to be really working. I think blogs fit really nicely into that ecosystem, by serving as artifact collectors and editors who constantly point out new and useful things on the web. One million poo flinging monkeys can make the world a better place.

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