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Monologues with a Search Engine
December 19, 2007 | 54 Comments
B and I started our blog on Feb 1, 2007. Roughly 11 months and 300 posts later we are exhausted. Funnily enough we are energized at the same time. A great part of that is due to our readers from around the globe – 173 countries at last count. That’s quite humbling and exciting when you consider that the UN recognizes only 192 countries!
As we look forward to a new year filled with blogging, we wanted to find out more about our readers. We have a reasonable number of regular readers (yeah we know you from your IP even if you don’t comment) and a whole slew of random visitors.
Broadly these random visitors came from organic search engines like Google (80%), Yahoo (15%) and MSN (4%) etc. We were surprised to learn that Google Images sent 15% of the Google traffic.
We picked out from over 40,000 search parameters – some hilarious, many puzzling – that brought folks to our blog. We have no clue how some of these folks landed up in our site and why they stayed (BTW, we are not complaining).
More than 90% of the ones listed here are from folks who stayed to see at least one page in the blog. We hope you enjoy our selection. In typical Jugalbandi style, let’s have some fun at others’ expense. Shall we? All words within “quotes” in bold italics are actual searches.
Many wanted to celebrate Indian Food.
Hopefully the person looking for “indian food for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” got what they wanted. And the prayers of “aagaya aagaya halwa wala aagaya” were answered.
Maybe this worked out for the person who said “i want a blow-by-blow account of making indian sweets“. “How to make tasty kaju kathli using khoya” must have left empty handed as we have not posted ours, but then we wonder who would post a recipe saying, “here’s kaju katli, but it’s not tasty”. :tongue:
Thanks to Nupur, people all over were looking for “popular indian foods with letter q” and probably landed on our Qabuli.
Precision and perfection is always a good thing in cooking, although we tend to change things around a bit just to see what happens.
We were reminded that there are serious questions to consider, such as “i have a recipe that calls for cream of tartar and baking soda. can i substitute this combo with baking powder? what would the proportion be?”.
Other requests included “calories in 1 whole piece of nan“, “quantities for falafel using 400g tin chickpeas“, “preheat oven handvo” and “quantity of fat content to make tasty hyderabadi kheema recipes“.
Cyberspace simultaneously whets our curiosity and increases our wonderment. Increasingly we seem to be going to the web to figure out “what is difference between groundnut and peanut“, “what is cranberry called in malayalam“, “what is blackstrap molasses in hindi?“, “what is avocado called in tamil” or “what is a jaggery” or better still “what does pita bread look like“.
Ever wonder “what happens when a tea spoon of eno fruit salt is added to a table spoon of lemon juice“?
Or are there “recipes for homemade antimicrobial spice mixes“?
Or “what went on inside a hopi dwelling“? :shh:
Incredulity knows no bounds as we figured from “is there such a thing as a cashew brittle“.
What if you screwed up? Look no further, the web is there to help. Or maybe it didn’t for folks who typed “i planted a green leaf veggie and forgot what it is can you show me pictures off home grown green leaf veggies“. :hammer:
And the person who “ate too many almonds“. :hmm:
What if you are frustrated? The World Wide Web is there to help for post-procedural complications.
There are plaintive calls of “My idli batter never rise – Why?“.
Or “why my rasgullas break and become liquid“.
Or “why did my microwave explode when boiling water with soap“. 
Or “yogurt starter tired“.
Then there are deep metaphysical issues like “what century are we in 2007“. :cow:
And social ones like “men should learn cooking“. :rolleyes:
What if you are just a happy go lucky person? Taking life as it comes, accepting what life gives you?
Then you may ask for “some recipe of tarla dalal” or “making any item in paneer” or “take me to modern vegetarian blog“.
It is easy to put together a presentation or a school assignment these days. All you need to do is to ask for “things that grow in soil” :huh: or for “short sentences on what is the nutrient found in“.
To make the report snazzy and colourful with pictures, you can command the Google God to “locate picture of jackfruit“. Or be polite and deferential, as in “would like to see images of freshly baked bread” or “i would like to have a picture of jackfruit please“. Or provide precise pointers as in “tomato+ketchup+jpg“.
Some folks will go to great lengths in finding an ingredient – “where to buy tia maria chocolate liqueur” while others want the ingredient to come to them – “swiss chard in bangalore“.
We love Trader Joe’s but don’t have one near-by. We are envious of 11 folks who typed in exactly “buy queso blanco mexican cheese traders joe“. Or could it be persistence by one person? We thought of the same person typing that multiple times when we saw 18 searches named exactly “get lessons how to make home made cheese only lots pics“. Learning is always a good thing especially with pictures.
Ask “anyone has tried to make rasgulla” or “u make cheese” and your wishes may just be granted.
We were not the only ones trying to figure out “what to do with cauliflower leaves” or “what to do with mooli“. Glad we could help out with these and also provide answers to “why do pumpkin plants need bee“. 
We are awfully sorry, though, that we could not resolve a few mysteries such as “i love baba ghanouj why is it so good“. :dance:
And our favourite: “John is a baker. he is tall. he likes to eat cakes and ice cream. what does he weigh?” :hmm:
Wish we knew.
- Jai
Filed Under: blog, Google, MUSINGS, search-engine, traffic, vegetarian recipes
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54 Comments
:rofl:
Very very funny.. i was trying to see if any of my search words/phrases were in there
You guys rock :dance:
One of my favorite pastimes is reading the keyword searches that bring people to my site — that was genius to share it in a post! As they say in my husband’s part of the country, “you guys are wicked cool!”
No way! :no: :embarrass
I had someone search for “baking a rat cake ” :huh: that led to my blog!!!