Every once in a while, a really juicy hit to my referrer log sips by me the first time, and I only find it at the beginning of the following month, when my automated traffic analysis software parses the previous months’ W3SVC logs. Just dug this one out of my November’s detailed access report.

Okay, so no search engine is perfect. I think we’re all aware of that, we’ve all seen it in action. And God knows I’ve waxed poetic/polemic/pathetic about it before. But given the near-ubiquity of the venerable Google in this highly contested arena, it’s interesting that you can still stumble across search results that can give one pause. Or, at other times, give one a petit mal seizure.

An example? Why yes, certainly, thanks so much for asking!

How about the surfer from North Dakota who made it to my site in early November via a Google search of the phrase, “our dachsund masturbates with herself”?

Excuse me; my grammar was a bit off. I really should have composed that last sentence thusly:

How about the surfer from North Dakota who made it to my site in early November via a Google search of the phrase, “our dachsund masturbates with herself” ? ! ? ? ? ! ! ! ! ? ! ! ? ? ? ? ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ? ? ! ! ! ? ! ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

Yes, that’s better.

Of course, I just had to scout around and try to follow the search back to the source. Not the source of the query itself (though I did find it quite amusing that the IP address of my visitor came from a block of addys owned by—ahem—Dickey Rural Networks), but rather back to and through the pages (and pages, and pages) of results returned by said query. I was just dying to know where my site fit into the overall scheme of dachshund-self-gratification-related search results. (And oh my God, I can’t wait to see what kind of searches wash up on the shores of Uncle Andrew dot Net after this entry gets spidered a few dozen times. Maybe it’ll even knock “Erin Esurance Nude” out of the #1 spot in my referrer log.)

Funny thing was, after trawling about twenty pages of search results, I had yet to see any traces of my site listed among the retuns (and boy, would I like to expunge those fifteen or so minutes from my memory, lemmetellyou). I can’t imagine this person digging down further than two hundred results to try to find the answer to his or her—question? problem? proud proclamation?—so I gave up.

This leaves me with a bit of a conundrum, though. I can only think of two likely explanations for the sudden appearance and subsequent disappearance of a link to my blog from a Google search such as this.

The first explanation is that, in the intervening time between the date of the search and the date I discovered it, dozens or even hundreds of more relevant sites on the topic of dachshund masturbation rose to ascendancy in the informational firmament, and my site with its humble offerings was knocked many, many rungs down the ladder. I can only pray that this is the true reason for the sudden change in my ranking.

Because the only other way I can see this scenario playing out involves the searcher in question typing, “our dachsund masturbates with herself” into the Google search window….

and hitting “I’m Feeling Lucky“. 😯