weird search

STILL pissing myself laughing

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:57:00 +0000

I've been waiting and waiting and getting annoyed that the group blog wasn't indexed with Google yet. I finally checked the webmaster tools today and yay, it's on Google! But so far the only search term is:

topless whipping

Thanks, Lisa. (Pretty sure you were responsible for that term!!!)

Generation Alfalfa

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:27:00 +0000

I just had a (long overdue) squizz at what's going on in the land of the webmaster tools. Apparently, "generation alpha" is drawing quite a lot of people to NoAddedSalt. It's becoming difficult to know just how Google is really ranking my websites, because it is now "helpfully" remembering the websites I visit, and pushing them up the search results. A pox on dynamic results, I tells ye!

And the bagpipes are still right up there. It touches my heart.

Sadly, the neglected CrazyOdd is mostly getting visitors looking for clipart. And farmer clipart. And cow clipart. And and and... but in a beautiful save, it's also grabbing people who searched for "1wank". Nice.

And what about this blog? That same old favourite - cognitive bubble shooter. What I want to know is this: Are we talking about cognitive bubbles, or something far more sinister? Hmm?

Your Assistance Is Requested

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Mon, 10 May 2010 17:36:00 +0000

No, no, I don't have eleventy bajillion dollars that I need to transfer out of a Nigerian bank. I have search queries I don't understand. And it's more interesting to ask you than to try and figure it out for myself.

These items have all led people to my blog, and I cannot fathom why.

(Apparently... when in doubt try a different language?)
royce chang
"2007[/url]" blogspot "post a comment"
(the above was not my mistake, someone actually searched for that)
claveles
z-ro
dailytang
dudelsack

Before I end this post I have one last thing to say.

dudelsack. BUAHAHAHAHA!

As promised

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Thu, 06 May 2010 17:19:00 +0000

More bizarreness from the search query trackers.

Australian cow (apparently, we have these. I never knew. I've learned more about the country since I've moved abroad.)
cow's butt (well yeah. That was my next question, how about you?)
snot clipart (what the hell? Who would need this? Who would MAKE this? What does snot clipart look like? Wait, I don't want to know.)
Finland be afraid be very afraid (snort, too late, you should have warned them earlier)
nun sex
naughty librarians
naked hula (I suppose they didn't find what they wanted with "nun sex" or "naughty librarians")

And the number one search term... and I mean, this one is FAR and AWAY the most common search, and quite a lot of people are clicking through to read my blog... can you guess? I don't know about you, but I'm incredibly proud. My dream come true, the one thing I always wanted to be known for. My magnum opus.

Bagpipes.

Yes, I'm proud.

Long Time Between Drinks!

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Mon, 03 May 2010 17:04:00 +0000

I decided to check my webmaster tools today and what do I see? Ponderous, ponderous search strings! For your viewing pleasure, I present: nuns in underpants.

I just... I... dude. Come on! Someone searched for that. Someone wanted to see that. Think about it for a second. (No, don't think about the nuns. Think about the kind of person who'd want to search for that.)

I did a bit of a search myself, to see if my guesses were correct. Well, partly. There were the expected porn versions (and I'm quite sure that not one of the so-called nuns had ever made a commitment to JC). But sadly, one of the nuns appeared to be Matt Lucas in a nun outfit. I was going to post it, but I've decided to use a different image to demonstrate what the nun kinda looked like. You'll just have to imagine him dressed as a penguin.

Here is the second strange image that I found for the same search.

I would love to be able to say that there was only one weird search string that came up. Really, I would. But the frog-cat with the martini glass has got me all flummoxed. And there are evidently a lot of crazies out there searching for weird stuff. I'm going to tell you all about them... next time.

Galleries - Weird Hotels and Beautiful Caves

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Sat, 30 May 2009 09:19:00 +0000

The World's Weirdest Hotels

Ten Amazingly Beautiful Natural Caves

Extra Cash Ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:10:00 +0000

Surveys

Aussies Only:
http://linkbee.com/2718 (this one has personally paid me)
http://linkbee.com/2727
http://linkbee.com/2735

Worldwide
http://linkbee.com/270L
http://linkbee.com/28BE
http://linkbee.com/28B6
http://linkbee.com/28BG (USA, Canada, United Kingdom & Australia)

Paid To Twitter programs (Worldwide)
http://linkbee.com/2753
http://linkbee.com/28AK

Other programs
If you blog or Twitter and are posting links, using those "short" link websites, you might as well get paid, so have a look.

Galleries - Interesting pictures

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Sat, 16 May 2009 23:42:00 +0000

AWESOME sand sculpture photos from festival in the USA. http://linkbee.com/270F

The gallery title is "Strange Food" but it should have been called "Food I'm Not Touching". Truly bizarre. http://linkbee.com/04NK

Gallery of Cave Hotels around the world... now this is what I call COOL! I need a cave to live in. Caves rock. http://linkbee.com/ZY56

Very Tweety

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:43:00 +0000

I deleted the LoudTweet on my LiveJournal (because apparently, some people don't like reading my tweets there). Hey, I can actually understand that. It's funny how tweets are cool when you're reading a timeline, but in a journal site it... just isn't cool. I suppose while in Twitter we're used to short & sweet comments, our attention span is short but matches the size of the info.

So. I'm not going to spew them all into here using LoudTweet. It has its merits, but I think it's better suited to someone who only tweets once or twice a day. On the other hand, I tweet a lot. Like, heaps. So I'll post a handful in here that are less irritating than the others... how's that? :D

One type is the competitions. I'm backtracking a while, so I apologise if any of them are expired. From now on they should be fine.

A reason for being

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:53:00 +0000

Merely posting weird search results has made this blog a little difficult to populate. Essentially what I've found is that what I comment about in my search results comes up next time. And I don't REALLY want to post the same item every time ;)

Something I also do in my spare time is enter competitions. I swear, one day I'll win the car. But I digress... I *do* win things, every now and then, from stationery to lunch boxes, thumb drives to watches and t-shirts. Even small items are exciting to grab from the mailbox. So I've been Twittering the better comps so that other people can enter too. I know that reduces my chances of winning (haha!) but it's all about the looooove!

If you don't follow me already, I'm @Ruu_Elisa. Send me a Direct Message there to say hi! Or just start any tweet with @Ruu_Elisa and I'll also see it. And if you hear of a cool comp to enter online make sure you post it - and send it to me so I can retweet you!

huge dive

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:39:00 +0000

For someone who's trained in IT, I can be amazingly Luddite in attitude at times.

Ok, who am I kidding? I absolutely despise change to anything and everything that might upset, nay, even vibrate my cushy little comfort zone. I had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of Windows 98, and by the time I took the plunge, I'd already modded my software in a desperate attempt at improving the poor memory performance. I had replaced the Windows shell with Litestep (OMG! that was just SO AWESOME and sexy that I was almost able to forgive its shortcomings). In fact, my time with Litestep shell awakened me to how people could switch to Lunix AND LIKE IT. *

It took the dogged determination of my then-boyfriend to pull me out of the dark ages and into the light of Windows XP. That's right, folks, this little gamer had been playing Quake 3 on an OS that had been long left behind by her battlemates. Other LANners at Macquarie Uni had eagerly queued up for the debut sales of Windows Millennium Edition (HA! Hahaha, haha. And ha. HAHAHA! ok, I'm over it now.) In even larger numbers they grabbed hold of Windows 2000's Professional release. So there was I, languishing on an OS deemed by the gaming community to be three-times-superceded.

And even when I relented, it wasn't so much that the boyfriend convinced me. He also lived with Mr Cool Geek, who helped run the LANs, and one of the coolest dudes I've ever met. Goo rocked up to my place, shiny XP CD in hand, and it was a done deal. There's no way I could win the argument against the two of them ganged up, so I let them have their way with my little puter.

I fell in lust with XP so fast that it's odd I'd resisted so long. But here I am, doing it again, sworn not to touch that rabid Vista. Anyway, this post wasn't about Microsoft. Microsoft, a company that once made Millennium Edition. HAHAHA!

This post was about me and social networking. I hated hated hated the idea of Facebook and was NEVER joining it. I now have tons of friends on Facebook. Worse still was that freaky Twitter thing. I have no clue how you work that damned thing, it's new and faddy, it won't take off, I'm not bothering with a weird texty thing like teenagers use in class! So, did I mention that I love Twitter more than I love Facebook?

And stubbornly yet again I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in these API thingies and clients and whateveryoucallits for Twitter. I don't need to tweet from my car, from McDonalds or while on my mobile phone. There's nothing wrong with the Twitter home page, why get any other app?

Today I went searching for a tiny Twitter app to run on my desktop. I'd reasoned that if something were running down there, I'd be more likely to update it more than once a day. (The impetus for this was the fact that I am earning money from advertising on Twitter, and the less I talk the less I earn.)

First I tried a browser plugin for Firefox. I HATED IT. It was just ugly, weird and made me feel like a DOS n00b seeing a mouse for the first time. Binned. Then I found something called Klipfolio. A forum post said it had a Twitter option. WOOT! Install, ok, now I need to add the Twitter "Klip". WTF?

I need to interrupt myself here. I've never been so pleased with a new app as I am with Klipfolio. It's a collection of shortcuts ("Klips"). You can view it as a window, a toolbar, a taskbar, a sidebar, whatever you want. In that way it reminds me a bit of Litestep but brought into the 21st Century. You install your base, um, thingy, and then you choose your addons and snap them into the bar/window/toolbar. You can have it always on top, you can hide it, you can have it sit above your taskbar, etc. You can make it huge or tiny and you can just drag and drop to rearrange your Klips.

Right now I have a little CPU monitor (96%, but that's a game's fault), a currency converter telling me that the Aussie dollar is worth 54 euros, a search box for Youtube, and a widget that brings me the latest flash games. But I digress. I wanted this thingy just for the Twitter widget so I could post from the desktop.

AND THERE IS NO SUCH THING! Oh the tears. Klipfolio has a metric bajillion** Klips doing everything and more, including a Facebook "status" updater showing you what your friends are all doing, but no Twitter widget? The only one they have sends you nothing but dev updates and news from the Twitter owners.

Frown.

Tantrum. It must be here somewhere.

In the end I've compromised. I Klipped in an RSS feed for my Twitter page instead. Incidentally, this wasn't so easy. Twitter futzed with their feeds not so long ago and made them rather unfriendly to third-party applications in general. Even Google Reader can't cope with them (they require certificate authentication). So I found a free clean burner site and wedged its offering into the RSS. I now have a cool little tooltip that pops up from the clock showing new Twitter tweets in my feed. And of course I can turn it on or off, make it show more or less often. I can't directly update Twitter yet but Klipfolio say it's in the works. And if one of the tweets looks interesting I just click it, the tweet appears in Firefox, and I can hit reply.

I feel fresh and new. Invigorated and very proud of my achievement.

I think this must have been how Hillary felt on reaching the peak of Mt Everest.

Or how Bill Gates felt when Microsoft released Windows ME.***

Hahahaha!

* Lunix is not a typeoh.
** Bajillion is a technically scientific number.
*** ROTFLcopter.

BEGIN rant

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:29:00 +0000

I love JavaScript. Don't get me wrong, I do think it's incredibly versatile and creative.

But I CANNOT STAND its overuse. This is my one and only bugbear with Gmail, which is otherwise absolutely awesome. However, this rant isn't about Gmail.

It's about WordPress. How can any of you stand it? I'm about to smack my monitor into kingdom come. I had wondered for ages what it was like (since so many bloggers use it) but I'd never been quite game enough to use it here and upset the status quo. I'm so very glad I never did. It's evil.

I'm now a contributor on another blog and the administrator uses WordPress... and ugh. It hangs my browser non-stop while executing who-knows-what scripts doing goodness-knows-what. Sheesh, ALL I WANTED TO DO was paste some HTML to embed a video. But nooooooo. That's too hard. This has turned my ten minute article into nearly an hour. And still, it looks like I will be unable to grace the article with the fair Lee Lin Chin's news report.

Rant finished. I now return you to your regularly-scheduled program. Carry on and feel free to use JavaScript to your hearts' content.

In which I extol the virtues of bubble shooting

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:45:00 +0000

As predicted, there are a lot of variations of Bubble Shooter in the search tracking. But in a new development there's now "dead whale bubble shooting". Uh, nice.

And someone's looking for "insect bite vacuum eBay". Is there actually such a product? In the words of Sean Connery, I'll buy a dozen.*

There are a fair few Bingo Marker searchers landing here. Welcome! We'll pretend for a moment that you meant to arrive! Same with the people who were after the motorbike and stonehenge cakes, and the mayor who scaled the ladder to rescue the sunbathing dog.

My proudest moment for today is being the top result for "my crazy dance salta nallen". Even if just for a moment. Even if I have no clue what it's about, it doesn't matter. It's all about the glory.

* on SNL, of course.

Alright Team!

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 13:28:00 +0000

Here we go!

Today's episode is a story all about me. You'll have to excuse the odd grammatical snafu - searchers CLEARLY pay no attention to my story-writing needs. (Clears throat.) Let's begin.

Pleased to meet you - my name is Mark Nolan.

Evidently, today I must be wearing odd panties. I think those are the kind where one leg-hole doesn't match the other. They're also known as Sims 2 panties. Well, nobody ever accused me of being a fashion tragic, since I'm actually a Romanian truck driver dancing.

My job involves nude pics of Coles Supermarket, Dubbo. Quite often, after work, I'm known to wanking wrap it in tissue no mess.

In my spare time I pretend to be a disabled lady given a mermaid tail. Or if it's a slow day, I often switch to happy religion, and footprints are carved into the floorboards by monk who has prayed at the same spot for 20 years. (Editor's note: This one wins the "longest search string" award for the week.)

Before I go, I must tell you one last snippet about myself. My proudest achievement for the year so far: I am presently the #1 Google result for "gargantuan lactating whale". Now I'll be able to sleep at night.

Persistence

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 01:29:00 +0000

Just for a taste of something different, I'm going to blog about the things people searched for that led them to my blogs. I had a look at the results for this blog (weird search) and there's nothing new. Boo! But I think Google felt sorry for me because the search results for the other two made up for my disappointment. Among them - "38KKK nipples".

Pardon?

I am ONE HUNDRED PERCENT sure I have never blogged about 38KKK nipples before. In fact, I would have thought it was BUST size, not nipple size, but I digress. Why are people searching for this? They should just enter the search string that would get them results, and that is "gargantuan lactating whale". (I apologise in advance to anyone who actually *is* a size 38KKK nipple since I apparently just called you a gargantuan lactating whale, and you might not actually be breastfeeding. Sorry.)

Additionally this week we have "eggs south pole". Um, sure, I suppose if you are an Antarctic researcher then you occasionally have a yearning for sunny-side-up, and Google is always handy for finding out which nearby shops on Antarctica stock locally-sourced free range.

Someone is searching for "priest panties training bra". Someone else wants "horrific burns groin petrol station" which presumably relates to a recent news story, but do they expect pictures? Seriously? I know that if it were me watching someone with their nether regions on fire, the first thing I would do is grab my trusty Box Brownie and snap away.

Now, putting aside someone looking for "presidential pardons", there are five different combinations looking for Susanka Bersin, including naked, nude, and fake. She's a popular lass. Sorry guys, no naked Susanka Bersin here. I did post about her boob grope and the resulting slap, but she was well and truly clothed.

All of these so far were for Crazy Odd, but looking at No Added Salt was also interesting, for a very different reason. First, we have a new entry: "Jay Leno poopy butt". I'm sorry Jay. I truly am.

And then we have a bunch that seem to be from someone, ahem, "resourceful". I have to list these. I just can't do them justice by describing them one by one.

cognitive bubble shooter
one mans blog bubble shooter
bubble shooter salt
bubble shooter cognitive
bubble shooter game one mans blog
bubble shooter one mans blog
bubble shooter
salt bubble shooter
cognitive games bubble shooter
one mans blog bubbleshooter
bubbleshootergame one mans blog
bubble shooter cognitive games
bubble shooter "game one" mans blog

That, kids, is called "persistence".

The sad part is that now, if this person tries to search again, my blog is going to come up EVERY SINGLE TIME. Hell is Weird Search Blog.

Fresh Produce

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 02:39:00 +0000

I had another stroll through the bowels of my referrers today (or, "Where did these people come from?"). A handful of people trickle in here each day; considering I don't promote this place I can hardly complain. Also, in Weird News Today™, randoms are following me on Twitter. I've no idea where they're coming from, or what could be so exciting in my tweets. But in response I'm going to post fewer tweets were I complain about the weather.

Your favourites* are still hanging around. There's apparently no curing some people of their addiction to bat poop, butt paste, snotty sims or boiling urine. But in an exciting new twist* we now have "urine smells like hot dogs". Just HOW close are these people getting to their toilet bowls? And why would that bring them here? (For the record, I have no idea if my urine smells like hot dogs, because I don't make a habit of sniffing it.)

Someone with an odd fetish found me via "japanese panties and pantyhose clips". Someone disturbing via "Australian bushfires hot chicks". Well yes, I should imagine families' injured laying hens would technically be hot chicks. I can only hope that you weren't searching for burned or injured female humans with that string.

Sir Paranoid wants information on "Google Phone Tracking", presumably because he stole a car with a phone in it and is concerned that police might show up in lieu of some hot girls with drugs.

Before I go, I need to include this one because it made me laugh rather than just scratch my head. I know that I used the word lickable in a recent post, and I was totally referring to cool widgets in templates, which are very lickable. And occasionally I will post a pic from Fail Blog since it is funny. But why someone would combine them is beyond me... nor do I really understand how "fail blog lickable" landed them here. If I knew who they were, I'd pass them tissues to cope with the disaster. Oh the humanity.

Gotta run. Someone is "stealing panties from back garden" and I need to go look for them out my back door.

* Or not.

Nonsense Words

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 05:45:00 +0000

I'll admit it, I never actually expected to discover that people are finding me via nonsense words. I'm now the top search result for "protectrix cowpuncher quickthorn", but that's to be expected, since it was a Googlebomb experiment.

But "dfhla" - now that's another one altogether.

A closer look tells me that this came from a keyboard-mashing incident while I was testing my feed. Google indexed it in the sliver of window before I deleted the post. But hey, let's get into the more interesting shall we?

perfume plane
mrs peabody's beach (please note correct use of apostrophe)
new zealand korean priest bike blog
salt bubble shooter
lady chatterfield ( ! ! ! )
searches like chuck norris

Look. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times.

You do not search for Chuck Norris. He finds you.

Bushfire Appeal

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:27:00 +0000

Are you in Australia?
Is this you?

I'd really like to help out, but to be honest, I am not that rich.
You know, it's sad and all, but it's not in my street and life goes on.
I don't really want to part with my hard earned cash.
There's a credit crunch you know? The government will help them.
Poor Bushfire people, but I don't want to use my credit card online.
I really can't be bothered.

Don't feel guilty, do it the easy way that costs you nothing!

Coles Supermarkets all over Australia will be donating 100% of their store profits for this Friday, 13th February, 2009. If you don't believe me, check out their website at www.Coles.com.au. All you need to do is do your normal grocery shopping there on Friday instead of a different day or shop. I'll be there and Coles isn't even where I normally buy from. I'll even be there without my car, and taking a taxi to get the stuff home!

Please, I rarely ask people to send stuff on, but let everyone know about this. Get into your email now and spread the word, or click the little envelope below to send it from here.

Let's turn a Black Friday into a good one.

~ Elisa

cross-posted to um... everywhere

Attention "Template Designers"

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:11:00 +0000

Floating two white columns of 50% transparency over the top of celebrity pic does not a "template" make.

Nor are you hosting "over 100 blog templates" by repeating this exact "design" with 100 different celebrities.

Just had to get that off my chest.

I found a template I like, by a completely different designer, but it has a few teething problems. If you're reading this at stupid o'clock in the morning of the 10th of February, you can see what I mean. There are some page elements turned on that the designer hadn't counted on me using. Please mind the holes in the floor and the dust etc while I iron them out. Do not adjust your screen.

American Pink Begone

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:17:00 +0000

I REALISE that the colour scheme now breaks all the rules of design.

The background is simply an emergency two-minute fix to remove the ghastly pink that was scaring small children (apologies to the original designer). It isn't a permanent thing. It's merely intended to put a few optometrists out of a job for lack of work.

UGH!

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:04:00 +0000

This template is now seriously annoying me. It's embarrassing. I apologise for the over-abundance of pink, and the sheer in-your-face blandness of it all.

We've nearly got to The Moment, folks.

The Moment is when my annoyance overrides my laziness, and I do something about it.

Just now, my interest in a cup of coffee is far outweighing the annoyance factor. However, like a splinter under the fingernail, it continues to irritate, and procrastinating doesn't make it go away.

Mutter.

You Found Me HOW?!?!

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:52:00 +0000

Today's instalment of weird search features some unusual search string combinations.

How novel! ;)

First of all, the ones that make sense, since I blogged about something quite similar:

paper shredder Darwin
intruder panties sausage
bagpipe funnies

There's a certain, um, satisfaction (?) in seeing those things come up. Or something. But then we have the ones that don't quite make so much sense, or reflect pretty badly on me, or both.

I steal panties
comet shakes Dubbo (serious? I didn't feel a thing)
has a weird fascination with snow plows
hamster in Kuwait
urine smells like popcorn
bailey cream on the plane
boyfriend number 2
boiled urine smell

Just WHAT were those people trying to find?

Do we actually want to know?

And who can forget our absolute regular?

batt poop butt paste

But seriously. I had to end on a more serious note. Something you might not be aware of. Thanks to Google's Webmaster Tools, here's the news (don't forget you heard it first in Weird Search Blog):

Elisa was arrested

cross-posted to No Added Salt

The Joys Of Dialup

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:53:00 +0000

Technically of course, I'm not on dialup. However, my internet plan has a data cap, and once I reach that limit, I am shaped to 28K speed until the end of my billing cycle.

You can appreciate that I'm overjoyed at this. $#@$@&!#%@ kids %@&#$*!*

There are ways around it of course. You know, like calling Mr ISP and crossing his palm with silver. Regrettably, I love money, and don't have enough of it to be upgrading myself to the point where my monthly access cost would feed a small African nation. If I did, I'd be cruising the streets in my brand new black Prius and handing out autographed souvenirs before retiring to my ecological mansion complete with servants, swimming pool and orchard.

I can dream, can't I? Besides, being rich probably wouldn't make me happy. My dad has been fanatically saving every penny since nineteen yickety two, but hey, you can't take it with you.

In the meantime I have Coca Cola :D

Disclaimer: I am not paid to tell you that I'm drinking Coke.

Drats.

Google Is Dangerous!

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:24:00 +0000

Strange Things Are Afoot At The Circle-K, in the words of Ted Theodore Logan.

While queueing a post about a ninja and searching for an accompanying image, I discovered that all Google's search results for "ninja" had the warning: "This Site May Harm Your Computer". Being an online geekery fanatic, I did what any normal geek does: I jumped into chat with my significant other to see if I was the only one getting this result (aka "have I got a virus?").

No, I did not, since he turned up Disney as another site that was apparently extremely dangerous.

However, I just had to share the best result I found. (Click my screenie below to see what it's all about.) Google will kill you. Google is a ninja that will come after you in your sleep. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

~ Elisa

cross-posted to Crazy Odd News

FeedBurner: The Review

noreply@blogger.com (Shannon) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 11:42:00 +0000

So I've given FeedBurner some extra time to sort itself out. I'm not 100% happy, but I've decided that It May Stay. (However, if it puts its feet on the couch, leaves the toilet seat up, or eats my Tim Tams*, it's O-U-T-the-door.)

Here's a play-by-play.

Reliability: 4/5
Setup: 4/5
Features: 5/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Integration with Blogger and Google: 5/5
Syndication speed: 3/5

In the reliability stakes, I'm still getting messages telling me my xml page has "failed", which stops syndication dead. However, half an hour later I get a message that all is well, without me doing anything. FeedBurner seems to have issues with server lag. I hope it's temporary.

Setup of any new system is a pain. The downfall for FeedBurner is the sheer number of options. Fully-featured is sometimes a bad thing, and some were impossible for me to understand. As for the options I want, it has them all, and I'm happy with them.

As far as integration goes, only products owned by Google can earn 6 out of 5, however, it's not yet 100% integrated and sometimes pops up a Blogger window inviting you to paste code in manually. I expect that in time this will be seamless.

Now... speed? Or should I say... lack thereof. FeedBurner has never spontaneously syndicated my RSS feed within 4 hours of posting. Left to its own devices, the posts appear in Google Reader well after 1pm. The site post time is always 9:XXam on the blog, however. This is frustrating. However, as long as they still arrive each day I will accept this as the one truly abysmal part of FeedBurner.

* If you don't know what a Tim Tam is, or you've never had one, you MUST seek out a local seller and try them. Also sold as "Arnott's Biscuits" overseas, they are biscuit orgasms. When I say biscuit, it's like a cookie but not. A Tim Tam is two chocolate malt cookies (not as chocolatey as Oreos) with a creamy vaguely chocolate filling (but not strong or sickening sweet) and covered in milk chocolate. And no matter how it's described, it doesn't do the food justice. A favourite pastime of Australian talk show hosts is to make American guests eat these, and the guests are regularly reduced to wordlessness and/or expressions of blissful disbelief. "Mmmmmmmm!" and "Ohhhhh!" and "That is Soooooooo good!" are fairly regular comments. So yeah. Go find them somewhere like Google. It is soooo worth it.