How Folks Find My Website

My Web Host has a lovely little web accessible feature that shows, among many other things, how often pages are accessed and the search strings commonly used. It parses the access log and compiles the results into a clearly legible and visuallly appealing list. As the access log shows every single thing the web server does, it can be hard to read through, as pages with many thumbnails will have 30 or 40 consecutive listings.

I have taken some time to scan in worthy pieces of fiction and place them on my web site. They are in a directory called "greats". I have also posted some of my writings, including the entire sad, discouraging, and hard-to-get-through journal from my student teaching experience at East High School in Kansas City. There is an element of vanity in doing this; I hope someone wandering around the web will find something worth reading. Being the author of that document is gratifying. So I enjoy it when I see people searching the web and finding my stuff.

But I took a moment to look at the actual log to see what the search strings used to find my journal and an obscure story I really enjoy called "The Slave Who Was A Man". And here's what I found.

    209.18.228.216 - - [03/May/2003:20:14:15 -0500] 
    "GET /docs/east/03251992.html HTTP/1.1" 200 5126 
    "http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=high+school+student+fucking+teacher&ei=UTF-8" 
    "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)"

    138.88.107.222 - - [02/May/2003:21:22:49 -0500] 
    "GET /docs/greats/slave.html HTTP/1.1" 200 35429 
    "http://search.yahoo.com/search?va=turkish+galley+slaves&ei=UTF-8&vm=i&n=20&fl=0&xargs=&b=41" 
    "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Q312461; YComp 5.0.2.4; .NET CLR 1.0.3705)"

I shouldn't be surprised. I know that porn makes the Internet go. A very popular way to find my web site (using Yahoo, MSN, or Google) is to search on the word "topless" and find this picture, which in a sardonic mood I named topless.jpg. There are thousands of pictures on the web called topless; I never thought it would be the route into my web site. I imagine anyone finding it this way would be pretty disappointed....it does provide a small laugh to me when I see those searches, but only a small one.

But to find that my student teaching journal was uncovered by someone searching for stuff about "high school student fucking teacher" was pretty disappointing. The students I had did all their teacher-fucking metaphorically (as far as I know), and they were masters. However, no images are on my site that would satisy the prurient person looking for this sad stuff.

And it is very hard to imagine that the person looking for "turkish galley slaves" was looking for a military analysis of using slaves in a Renaissance navy. I may be mistaken, but I am guessing he was looking for more porn.

So, I keep publishing. There are many hits on my stuff with legitimate search strings. I get messages every now and then from readers grateful that I posted a particular story or photo. Hope you found this for some reason other than you were looking for pages about students fucking teachers. And tell ya what, if you do find those photos, I'd rather not see them. Many of us look better with our clothes on, and for teachers that is doubly true.