It occurred to me recently that it’s been quite some time since I sorted through some of the reports that WordPress compiles for me. Namely, the reports on “most common search terms.” Personally, I find checking out the search terms that bring folks here illuminating (and, occasionally, hilarious). It gives me an idea what people out in the inter-webs world is interested in and, therefore, what posts might be more helpful here.

Now, originally, I started my checking in on what the most recent search terms were. Things within the last 90 days. This is where I found the best “What the hell?” search terms. The following are the ones that made me chuckle. I have preserved any and all typos and punctuation. Any comments I make are in parenthesis:

• picture of sock puppet bomb (not sure if we should all be worried or not)
• craigslist mayor mcheese sale
• Is Sunday a good time to visit the vendors at dragoncon (personally, I think it’s one of the best. Not as crowded as Saturday, but most haven’t completely sold out of their stock yet)
• you sir are an ass
• ass parade (an astonishing 12 clicks from this search term…I’m not even entirely sure what they were trying to find
• robotic head toy dragons with fluffy feathers you put it on your shoulders (this one…is…I like how people type stream-of-conscious into their search engine)

There were twelve clicks from people searching “nerfgunbobbins.com” – which made me both happy (yay, readership!) and confused, as they could have just typed the address into the appropriate space on the browser. Oh well.

In terms of most popular, there were a couple of items of note. Sam Witwer remains the biggest draw, in terms of search terms, to my website. However, it’s not just people typing in “Sam Witwer.” I wanted to account for all of the varieties of the search term, and I learned the following:

• Sam Witwer – 1265
• sam witwer shirtless – 133
• Samuel Witwer shirtless – 12
• Samuel Witwer – 8
• “sam witwer” – 6
• starkiller costume – 7
• starkiller custome – 6

So, incorporating all of the different versions of his name as a search term, he brought in 1437 hits alone. Thanks, Sam!

Also pretty high on the list were Skeletor (two different forms of search term) at 497, and Pennywise (costume/cosplay/just the name) at 409.

What was really surprising were the minoan-centric searches that led to the site. The highest single search term brought in 220 just by itself, but when I factored in all of the different versions of “minoan” that popped up, I wound up with 1023 hits. The breakdown was as follows:

• minoan clothing – 220
• minoan dress – 179
• minoan fashion – 118
• ancient minoan clothing – 98
• minoan culture – 94
• minoan gowns – 78
• minoan clothes – 39
• minoan women – 23
• minoan women clothing – 22
• minoan bra – 19
• minoans culture – 18
• minoan fashion history – 12
• ancient minoan women clothing – 11
• minoan hair – 11
• minoan corset – 10
• ancient minoan dress – 10
• ancient minoan fashion – 9
• minoan palace – 9
• minoan gowns. – 7 (note the period)
• minoan style dress – 6
• minoan sexy – 6 (what is this, a Party City halloween costume?)

So, quite obviously, there are a bunch of people out there curious about ancient Minoan clothing. I didn’t even think there were that many people who knew what Minoan culture was. Even the people I knew who were big on Ancient Greek and Roman history didn’t tend to dig around too much in that specific region. Looking at the number of times people have looked for it, though, makes me wonder what might be out there in the way of resources.

I see a potential “overview of historic Minoan clothing” entry somewhere in the future. I’m sure the folks reading who don’t like history are going “No! Please! Not another history lesson!” Well, that’s what you get when you follow the blog of someone who loved history so much she went and got a degree in it. I am a nerd, people! And history is fun!