Public Service Announcement (PSA)

This Public Service Announcement (PSA) is to officially notify you that "People Other than Your Family can Find Your Blog (on the Internet) Even when you Haven’t Given them the URL".

So how do I know this?

Well, as part of their generic template, Blogger provides a tracking tool (you can also download other more detailed tools) that tells the Blog Owner (that would be me) what countr(ies), internet browsers and IP Addresses, accessed which of my posts on what days and at what time. Bet you didn't know that I was spying on YOU!?

Anyways, two Google searches caught my eye and I thought that I would do further research (yet another way that I am providing you with a service, I should get paid for this, in addition, did you know that Word 2000 doesn’t recognize "Google", I guess that makes sense, I digress).

The first was "chainsaw and lawnmower birthday party". I won’t got into "why" someone (who knows who) chose to search this string of words (we’d be here all day, besides, it sounds kind of "shady" and this IS a family blog...) however, I was prepared to tell you that I reviewed each of the 654,000 results that Google provided and none linked to The Zoo. Seriously, there are that many results. However, if I said that, I would be lying (and there isn’t any lying going on around here). Sure enough, the 7th (read that, 7th) link that came up was Uncle Eric's Birthday Party. Probably not what they were looking for but who knows, Uncle Eric is a handsome fellow.

The second one was "naked birthday pic". Once again, I was not disappointed with 75,100,000 results (that’s a lot of results). Only this time, we were the 5th link, WHAT HORROR!

Apparently, the post Being (Almost) Naked and Other Birthday Pictures caught their eye.

Can someone please educate me into believing that for some reason, these results were listed higher up because the search engine is looking for cookies (no, I'm not talking about Oreo's) on my computer.

Speaking of Oreo's, this week I got an email from a Marketing representative for a popular cereal that begins with a "C" has "heer" in the middle and ends in "ios". She thought that my post T.I.H.L.A... Said Company was really cute and wanted to post it on "Said Companies" Facebook page for their 500,000 followers to see (no, I've not mistakenly added a zero or 2 or 3).

As an aside, I always wondered why people put d.ots in.between s.ome wo.rds on their bl.og. Now I understand, they don't want spiders (not real spiders but the electronic kind) to find them.

So, back to "That Company", Ed and I decided that we didn't want to "Go Viral" (no, I don’t mean catch a bug) just yet so we declined. In case you're wondering why I didn’t put ...'s in the word "Oreo" it's because I'm (kind of) running an experiment to see if they too find me. Hey, maybe they’ll even offer us some free grub (again, not a bug).

On second thought, I might have to rethink this whole "we're a family blog" thing.