2/18/2003

MSN THINKS I'M FRENCH

Webmasters who eat TCP packets for breakfast know that scanning through your web access logs with human eyes once and while is a smart thing to do. This morning, for instance, I spotted some unusual activity that turned out to be spammers taking advantage of an exploit in the version of FormMail I was using (which just goes to show you: timely patching blah-blah-blah most recent upgrade blu-blu-blu). This was also how I was introduced to NameProtect, a charming company that spiders websites for the express purpose of finding something to sue the webmaster over. Compounding rudeness with insult, the company does not comply with the robot exclusion standard: their foul web-indexing bot ignores the contents of my middling-polite ROBOTS.TXT file. Another fun thing about access logs is seeing all of the odd-ball searches that have brought people in. Today I learned that MSN has somehow classified my webpages as being French, that some people talk to search engines like the help (find me a picture of a maze!), horny people can't spell (wile socculint women), and that some Russians are really sick (pictures of sex with SS uniform). Also: people tend to Ask Jeeves really dumb-ass questions. Other bizarre queries: rabbit snaring diagrams, ewan macgregor on the cover of the rolling stone, revolutionary mounting made front back, palm os beetle drives across screen, mannequins from wolf brothers, matthew davis naked, hot sensual massages on wall street, valium sylvester, free betacam, jessica rabbit collectibles, rube goldberg crushing machine, chain belted roll elevator rubber, blackface modification, girls getting wile, cartoon pictures of dog getting a bath, and last but not least, carrie fisher fuck. A fairly strong contingent of people surf to my pages via a link generated by Yahoo or Google after entering my complete web address as a search term, demonstrating the continuing psychological need for a kind of portal to the web despite the fact that many cyber-pundits have long ago declared portals dead.

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