Re: Surprising statistics

On 03-05-2008 4:20, Jesse F. Hughes wrote:

>> Yeah in a fantasy world of your creation where you can simply
>> declare that high rankings on search results are meaningless.
> 
> My homepage (which has very little original material compared to your
> blogs) comes up high when we search for "functions ears toes" or
> "sociology comics"[1], two topics I know nothing about.  The page
related
> to the former received only 21 hits in April and the latter 47.
> 
> One guy searched on "superman comic book slang" last month and came to
> my site.  
> 
> Someone did a search for "measure of efficacy" last month and came to
> my site.  It turns out that one of my papers uses that phrase and
> comes up first in Google as a result.  Since I got three hits on that
> search phrase last month, maybe my paper was relevant for them, but I
> find that a bit doubtful.
> 
> Here's one for you: "Means-end reasoning".  A very im****tant topic in
> practical philosophy, and yet one of my papers comes up fourth in
> Google's search for that phrase.  Does it follow that my paper is
> influential?  Not at all.  No one has cited that paper aside from me.
> (If you search Google scholar for "Means-end reasoning", that paper
> doesn't come up in the first half-dozen pages.)
> 
> Last month, someone searched for "the means-end basis for involvement"
> and was directed to my paper.  I'm sure I have no idea what "means-end
> basis for involvement" means.

How do you know all this? I mean, when you say something like "someone
searched for [...] and came to my site" how do you know that?

Best regards,

Jose Carlos Santos