Is this latent semantic indexing at work…

..or just that Google simply doesn’t care what things mean?

Lols.

Here’s a nice surprise for me in my web stats today.

Eww.  If you run a blog (or intend to), pretty soon you’ll get something similar to this appearing – leaving you wondering two things: firstly, “who’s searching my name like that?” (depends on how many unsavoury and vengeful people you’ve cheesed off) and second “why does Google return my site when that word isn’t anywhere in it?”

Is this the result of Google’s famous ‘latent semantic indexing’ at work? That clever algorithm that makes connections between words with related meanings? What’s true is that I have in the past blogged about protecting kids from unsavoury people online.  Is Google saying to me “Hey, since you’ve blogged about pornographers targeting kiddies via YouTube, we’ll return your site when someone searches for your name + …….. as a special favour”?

Why, thanks, Google.

Incidentally, the last item on that list (above) is an example of the same thing at work. Last December, a Google search for that phrase started to return my site – even though that phrase didn’t appear anywhere (either literally OR semantically!!).  The result? A lot of their dissatisfied customers looking for a place to share their experiences, plenty of revealing comments, a good deal of reputation pressure, some refunds – and finally a threat of legal action against me How did that occur? I had written a post about them a year earlier.  Add that (as Google clearly has) to the fact that I also write some posts about scams on this site and hey presto – a reputation crisis.

So, the moral of this story is that in GoogleWorld, you should expect to be guilty by association at some point or other – no matter what you have or haven’t done.