This is not a porn site: My review of referring keywords

Ian Lurie
By Ian Lurie / January 11 2010

Seriously, this is not, and never has been, an ‘adult’ site. K?

You’re wondering why I even have to say that? Well, today I innocently took a glance at my Google Analytics referring keyword report, and look at my #1 keyword for the last 30 days:

keyword abused

I thought maybe that was some kind of organization that helps abused teenagers. I did a quick Google search, and got this:

abused serp

…

I didn’t click any of the non-Conversation Marketing-related SERPs, by the way. Nor will I.

Now, I came by my Buy a Wife At Target ranking very honestly.

So how’d this one happen?

How it happened

Google ignores some very commonly-used words like ‘and’, ‘the’ and ‘is’.

My educated guess: Google decided that ’18 and abused’ is equivalent to ’18 abused’ and then matched that up to my article, which was titled ’18 most abused phrases of 2009′.

Fail

This ranking is a Google fail of epic proportions. Graywolf would have a field day.

Just remember folks: Check your referring keyword reports. For the comedic value, if nothing else.

Anyone have rated PG ideas for capitalizing on this? I’m kidding. I think. Yeah I am. No, wait…

Ian Lurie

Ian Lurie

 CEO & Founder
CEO & Founder

Ian Lurie is CEO and founder of Portent and the EVP of Marketing Services at Clearlink. He's been a digital marketer since the days of AOL and Compuserve (25 years, if you're counting). He's recorded training for Lynda.com, writes regularly for the Portent Blog and has been published on AllThingsD, Smashing Magazine, and TechCrunch. Ian speaks at conferences around the world, including SearchLove, MozCon, Seattle Interactive Conference and ad:Tech. He has published several books about business and marketing: One Trick Ponies Get Shot, available on Kindle, The Web Marketing All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies, and Conversation Marketing. Follow him on Twitter at portentint, and on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com/in/ianlurie.

Start call to action

See how Portent can help you own your piece of the web.

Find Out How
 End call to action
0

Comments

  1. I wrote a perfectly nice fairy tale about usability once (rip-off of the Princess And The Pea story) and started ranking for “father sleeps with daughter stories”. Made me a little ill.

  2. This reminds me of a time I registered a vanity domain name for myself, stopped paying for it, and the next thing I knew it turned into a porn site..

Comments are closed.

Close search overlay