Those Wacky Search Phrases

I am not  nearly as clever with my ripostes as Susan Higginbotham when it comes to this topic.. I guess my forte is snarky headllines on my medieval calendar blog... but it is still fun to look to see how people find my blogs.

I am not quite sure how to feel about this first one.  I suppose every teacher in every school all over the English speaking world assigned reports on the Black Death, because there were literally dozens of instances of "ring around the rosy" and one ominous "we all fall down".  Disturbing, no?

Then there was the person who looked for "hawthorne sex scenes".  I hope they meant the other author by that name.

Perhaps it was the same person who wanted sites about "medieval tickle".

It is always gratifying when someone looks for "nan hawthorne".  Unless, of course, it was me.

Several people wanted "medieval jokes".  I trust my novels were not what they expected to find.

I apologize profusely to the person who found a page on my blog when searching for "five stage model buying process" for having utterly neglected to write even the tiniest thing about it.

There was one for "Celebrochestet"...   I suppose that would be the town founded by the Baldwins.

I will give $50 to the person who searched for "Christenlande kingdom".  I dessperately want to know why they looked for it.

And my friend Barbara is going to want to know why someone was searching for: "Barbara Weitbrecht" facebook "black rose" or "blackrose" .

I guess it's good to know these folks got somewhere, even if nowhere near what they were looking for.

These were all from Nan Hawthorne's Booking History..  Random Bios is no fun.. people are always actually searching for what it's about.  Bios..

Find blogs at http://www.nanhawthorne.com/ .

What People Are Looking for in Medieval History



Leading searchers astray.

 This is always interesting, looking over what search terms people are using that lead them to a site. In the following instances, they all found themselves at Today In Medieval History... whether they learned what they wanted is anyone's guess, but we can speculate.

medieval nun england

Lots to choose from, of course. My guess is that the person was either looking for a story or novel they once read or perhaps want to know more about how nums lived them. What is your guess? I can’t tell you much about what they found. It was an image result on Bing with a link to an old archived set of posts. When I did the same search on Google I found much more germane results. Perhaps they just wanted to make a costume?

"today in medieval history"

There were several of these, and I hope I don’t flatter myself when I choose to believe they were all looking for my blog.

astronomer dies 2010

I am afraid all this person discovered at TiMH is astronomers died before 1600 also.

23 october 1066

Rather specific, as are some of the the following. In this case it looks like they learned that just one week before Harold Godwinson died at the Battle of Hastings.

1487 Ireland

I expect lots of things happened that year in Ireland, but one significant event was the arrest of Lambert Simbel, one of the pretenders who claimed to be a Prince in the Tower.

1407 – A truce between John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy and Louis of Valois, Duke of Orléans is a

I am just impressed that someone even knew about this. Even more impressive, there were two separate hits the same day from different people! What the rest of that sentence, “is a”, will forever remain a mystery.

politics middle ages 1251

Middle Ages and 1251? What they found on the blog was the birthdate of Marco Polo.. not a lot of political content in that natal event.

news in 30th december 1170

“This just in: Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas a Becket slain by unknown assailants during the celebration of mass. Four barons seen leaving the precincts on getaway steeds. News at 11.”

saladin today

What is this, a celebrity magazine or something?

September 1187

Perhaps they wanted a back issue of “Saladin Today” since this led two others to the retaking of Jerusalem.

This is just one of the many things you can find on a statistics tool like the one I use, Statcounter.com. For instance, the two people concerned about that truce about an hour and a quarter apart and using the same precise words were in Ashalnd and Columbus, Ohio. Our “Saladin Today” readers were in Brisbane, Australia, Derby, UK, and Rugby in the UK and the searches were conducted over two days the week before the anniversary of the event. At least one can follow the thought process there. Our nun seeker was at SUNY in New York, our possible Lambert Simnel fan in Hendersonville, Kentucky and it was someone in Tulsa, Oklahoma who was worried about politics in 1251.   Perhaps the filibuster is still going on.

Less encouraging is the information that most of these people clicked through and then skedaddled immediately, their stays totaling 0 seconds each! At least it was comforting that one of the people looking for “today in medieval history” muyat have really wanted the blog as the stats say “Multiple visits spread over more than one day”..

I actually came across a search I knew about. A woman who was trying to remember the Justin de Quincy mysteries titles I found on another blog’s stats, using logical search terms and finding and track-able through medieval-novels.com . So in this case it was no longer a mystery, I guess!

More Fun With Search Terms

Does this annoy you?

This time of year we need laughs.  Thanks to someone else's clever use of the search terms used in finding her blog and site, I am occasionally drawn to getting a hoot out of some of my own.

Courtesy of Statcounter.com .

free print and color alphabet pages

I do, in fact, freely use the alphabet in my blog posts.

History 3 на букинг

Did I really have this in my post?  I must have been channeling Ivan the Terrible.

winter coloring sheets

You mean, white ones?

female narrator in exeter riddles


You see, we were tricky back then too.

Medieval words for "foreigner"


In England, it was usually "those slimy French bastards".

historical narrative first person

How about "Veni, vidi, vici?"

history of Kipling's poem the bastard king of england

You'll have to talk to Lord Zippity Zap about that one.

anglo saxon riddle

"Why did the Norman cross the Channel?"
"To make a royal mess of things."

annoying historical figures

I've heard Anne Boleyn's figure really drove Katherine of Aragon up a wall.  See above.

burning issues in historical fiction

You came to the right place.. see the righthand column.

Not as funny as hers, but they tickled me anyway.

Of Wattle Walls, Cabbages and Thoughts on Nudity

Again I am ripping a page clean out of Susan Higginbotham's book and sharing some of the keywords with which people, intentionally or not, found their way to this blog.

"medieval vocabulary"

There were a few permutations of this one, including "middle ages vocabulary" and "medieval vocabulary for kids". I suppose my recent medieval vocabulary test drew these folks. Not so sure getting medieval on one's vocabulary is suitable for tender ears, however. I can just see it now...

Teacher: Philippa, please define "fundament".

"Edward II"

Odd. I thought I was the only person not writing about Edward II!

"medieval test pdf"

I honestly don't they had the technology to devise tests for Acrobat. Acrobats, mayrhap.

"Nan Hawthorne"

There is only one other I know of, and she is in Northern Ireland, so that's where to look if you meant the other one.

"thoughts on nudity"

Yes, I have many thoughts on that subject, almost all of them positive. Especially where Sean Bean is concerned.

"good marriage blog"

I have both. Not sure if that helps, though.

"how to pass 8th grade"

Probably by not attending a medieval monastic school.

"romantic 1916 rising songs"

Awww, someone after my own heart. Just don't blame me if you cry every time you hear "Grace" performed.

"middle ages characters"

They sure were, weren't they??!

"cabbage + metaphor"

The strange thing is that I actually did talk about a metaphor of Sharon Kay Penman's incolcing a cabbage...

"sex with a wall in the middle"

Oh my! What kind of wall? I suppose daub and wattle, with some of the daub missing.